It was an unfortunate memory to stir up, and it helped a flood of raw light to burst upon her. “You’re not really proposing I should be your guard?” she asked in a changed voice. “Yes, I am,” he reassured her. “For money?” she breathed incredulously. “Of course. You don’t suppose I ask it for love! Business is——!” Jinny turned on him like a tigress—anger was the only thing that could drown this dreadful sense of shame. “How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you ask me to work for you for money?” Will winced before her passion. “You promised not to fly at me,” he reminded her glumly. “I didn’t think you’d suggest that.” “And what’s wrong in suggesting a partnership?” “A partnership!” she sneered. “Do you suppose I’m going to pull you out of the mud?” Will’s blood was up in its turn. “You pull _me_?” “What else? You find yourself stuck and you come to me to save your funeral coach.” “Funeral coach?” “That’s what Gran’fer calls it. And you _will_ find yourself carrying corpses if you go on cooping up your passengers in this weather. Your silly concern hasn’t got a tilt to take off, but at least you might put the luggage inside and the live-stock on top. Oh, don’t be frightened, I won’t charge for my advice. But you being young and raw——” “Here! Stow that!” Will banged the floor with his whip. “Then you refuse my offer!” “Offer? I call it a petition.” “Me petitioning——!” His breath failed. “It wasn’t me that came with a flag of truce.” He snorted. “You’ll come one day with a cry for mercy.” “Me! You’ll never see _me_ at Frog Farm. I’d rather go to the poorhouse—to see you, I mean.” Will set his teeth. “Very well then—my conscience is clear. I did think I might have been hard on you. But now——!” “Now,” she echoed mockingly. “I shall crush you.” She laughed tauntingly “Pride goes before a fall.” “I shall crush you without pity.” “You young rapscallion!” It was the Gaffer hobbling back. Having lit the coach-lamps, he had lingered in voluptuous contemplation of what they illumined. But the noise of high words had reached him, and now with the astonishing muscularity that still lingered in his shrunken frame, the ancient seized the whip and wrenched it from Will’s grasp. Jinny flew between them, fearing he would strike as he stood there in prophetic fury, palpitating in his every limb. Her earlier intervention, though against a knife, had been comic: here was tragedy, she felt. “You crush my Jinny! Why, Oi’ll snap ye in two like this whip.” And he hurled the pieces of the stock at Will’s feet. Nip leapt for the butt-end and brought it back in his mouth with high-wagging tall, demanding another throw. He broke the tension of foolish mortality. “Don’t excite yourself, Gran’fer,” said Jinny, leading him to his chair. “I’ll cut him out before he’s a month older.” Will guffawed. “I offered her a fair chance, Mr. Quarles,” he said, taking the butt from Nip’s mouth. “You yourself said it was a handsome offer.”