Part 30 (1/2)
”I want to tell you,” here he arose, and dropping his careless manner, laid a threatening hand upon her arm. ”I want to tell you, Nance Burrill, that you have got to bridle that tongue of yours; d'ye understand?”
She shook off his hand, and retired a few paces eyeing him closely as she said:
”Oh! I thought so. Something has scared ye already.”
”No, I'm not scared; that thing can't be done by you, Nance; but you have been blowing too much among the factory people, and I won't have it.”
”Won't have what?”
”Won't have any more of this talk about going to my wife with stories about me.”
”Who said I threatened?”
”No matter, you don't do much that I don't hear of, so mind your eye, Nance. As for the women at the bend, you let them alone, and keep your tongue between your teeth.”
”Oh! I will; one can't blame you for seeking the society of your equals, after the snubbing you must get from your betters up there. But that don't satisfy you; you must drag that poor fellow, Evan Lamotte, into their den; as if he were not wild enough, before you came where you could reach him.”
John Burrill took another pull at the black bottle.
”Evan's a good fellow,” he said somewhat thickly. ”He knows enough to appreciate a man like me, and we both have larks, now let me tell you.”
”Well, have your larks; but don't sit and drink yourself blind before my very eyes. Why don't you go?”
”Cause I don't want'er--,” growing more and more mellow, as the liquor went fuming to his head, already pretty heavily loaded with brandy and wine. ”Where's the little rooster, I tell yer.”
”In the streets, and he's too much like his father to ever come home, 'till he's gone after, and dragged in.”
”Well, go and drag him in then, I'm goin' ter see 'im.”
”I won't!” shrieked the woman, now fairly beside herself with rage; ”go home to your lady wife, and take her my compliments; tell her that I turned you out.”
John Burrill staggered to his feet, uttering a brutal oath.
”You'll turn me out, will you? You say _won't_ to me; you are forgetting my training, Mrs. Nance; I'll teach you that John Burrill's yer master yet; go for the boy.”
But the woman did not stir.
”You won't, eh!” clutching her fiercely, and shaking her violently, ”now will you?”
”No, you brute.”
”Then, take that, and that, and that!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Then take that, and that.”]
A rain of swift blows; a shriek ringing out on the stillness of the night; then a swift step, the door dashed in, and John Burrill is measuring his length upon the bare floor.
The woman reels, as the clutch of the miscreant loosens from her arm, but recovers herself and turns a bruised face toward the timely intruder. It is Clifford Heath.