Mr. Belknap leaned forward. He was a heavy-built, easy-moving man; you had to grant him a kind of elegance that went queer enough with the preacher-air he wore of his own will. He put his head out and looked at her. I watched him close, and I saw a crafty, hard light in his eyes as if the tiger in him had come for a look out of doors. He purred soft, like a tiger. "Nowhere is humility more becoming than in a beautiful woman." At that minute his hold on me snapped. Believing him honest, he had me kiboshed--seeing that expression, which, I suppose, he didn't think worth while hiding from a gawky kid--I was my own man again, hating him and ready for war with him, in a blaze. Too young to understand much about love-affairs and the like of that, I still knew those eyes, that had shifted in a second from pompous piety to cunning, meant no good to Mary. "I don't know about humility," says I, "but I'll go bail for Mary's honesty." I laid my hand on hers as I spoke. Funny that I did that and spoke as I did. It came to me at once, without thinking--like I'd been a dog and bristled at him for a sure-enough tiger. Mary wasn't the kind to go back on a friend in any company. She put her other hand on mine and said: "That's the nicest thing you could say, Will." Mr. Belknap didn't like it. He swung around as if he found me worth more attention than at first, and when our eyes met he saw I was on to him, bigger than a wolf. All he changed was a quick tightening of the lips. We looked at each other steady. He ought to have showed uneasiness, consarn him, but he didn't. Instead he smiled, like I was amusing. I loved him horrible for that--me and my steeple hat and sash to be amusing! "You have a most impulsive nature, Mr. Saunders," says he. I wanted to tell him he was entirely correct, and that I'd like to chase two rascals the same day. I had sense enough not to, but said: "I'm not ashamed to own it--particularly where Mary's concerned." "Ah!" he says, raising his eyebrows, "you are old friends?" "Not so very _old_," says Mary. "That seems cold--we're very warm, young friends." "It is pleasant for the young to have friends," says he. "That's hardly as surprising a remark as your face led me to expect," says I. "It's pleasant for _anybody_ to have friends." It was his turn not to be overjoyed. I hid my real meaning under a lively manner for Mary's benefit, and while perhaps she didn't like my being quite so frivolous to the overpowering Mr. Belknap, she saw no harm in the speech. He did, though. "Am I to count you among my friends?" says he. "Any friend of Mary's is a friend of mine," I answered. He took. "Then that is assured," he says, with his smoothest smile. We all waited.