"
"Stop right there," broke in Peter's father. "That's damn nonsense,
and you know it. Nobody ever warned you that my boy was anything of
the kind."
"I was warned," she beat him down, "that it was a habit of your son to
win a girl's confidence with his kind ways and then deceive her."
"Then it was a damned lie, and no one but a damned fool would believe
it," shouted Peter Rolls, Sr. "My boy a deceiver of women? Why, he's a
Gala-what-you-may-call-it! He'd die any death sooner than harm a
woman. I'm his father, and I know what I'm talking about. Who the
devil warned you? Some beast, or some idiot?"
"It was neither."
"Who was it, then? Come, out with it. I dare you to. I'll have him
sued for slander. I'll---"
"It wasn't a he. It was a woman who ought to know at least as much
about him as you do."
"There's no such woman, except his mother, and she worships the ground
he walks on. Thinks he's a kind of up-to-date Saint George, and I'm
hanged if she's far wrong. Why, since Peter was a boy he's never cared
that"--and a yellow thumb and finger snapped for emphasis under Win's
eyes--"for any woman till he got silly over you."
The girl laughed a fierce little laugh.
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