Her face was turned from him; its thin profile was firm as silver wire.
He blundered off into silence and--they were at it again!
"I didn't mean to make you angry," he gulped.
"Well, you did! Bullying---- You and your men of granite, in mackinaws
and a much-needed shave, trying to make a well-bred woman satisfied with
a view consisting of rocks and stumps and socks on the line! Let me tell
you that compared with a street canyon, a mountain canyon is simply
dead, and yet these unlettered wild men----"
"See here! I don't know if you're firing these adjectives at me, but I
don't know that I'm so much more unlettered---- You talked about taking
French in your finishing-school. Well, they taught American in mine!"
"They would!"
Then he was angry. "Yes, and chemistry and physics and Greek and Latin
and history and mathematics and economics, and I took more or less of a
whirl at all of them, while you were fiddling with ribbons, and then I
had to buck mechanics and business methods."
"I also 'fiddled' with manners--an unfortunate omission in your
curriculum, I take it! You have been reasonably rude----"
"So have you!"
"I had to be! But I trust you begin to see that even your strong hand
couldn't control a woman's taste. Kidnapping! As intelligent a boy as
you wanting to imitate these boorish movie----"
"Not a darn bit more boorish than your smart set, with its champagne and
these orgies at country clubs----"
"You know so much about country clubs, don't you! The worst orgy I ever
saw at one was the golf champion reading the beauty department in
Boudoir. Would you mind backing up your statements about the vices of
myself and my friends----"
"Oh, you. Oh, I didn't mean----"
"Then why did you----"
"Now you're bullying me, and you know that if the smart set isn't
vicious, at least it's so snobbish that it can't see any----"
"Then it's wise to be snobbish, because if it did condescend----"
"I won't stand people talking about condescending----"
"Would you mind not shouting so?"
"Very well! I'll keep still!"
Silence again, while both of them looked unhappy, and tried to remember
just what they had been fighting about. They did not at first notice a
small red car larruping gaily over the road beneath the ledge, though
the driver was a pink-haired man in a green coat. He was almost gone
before Milt choked, "It's Pinky!"
"Pink! Pinky!" he bellowed.
Pinky looked back but, instead of stopping, he sped up, and kept going.