“I wish you’d close-herd this kid for about four hours,” he told Mrs. Kate bluntly, and left her looking scared and unconsciously posing as protective motherhood, her arm around the outraged Robert Chester Mason.  Mrs. Kate was absolutely convinced that Ford was at last really drunk and “on the rampage,” and she had a terrible vision of slain girlhood in the kitchen, so that she was torn between mother-love and her desire to protect Phenie.  But Ford had looked so threateningly at her and Buddy that she could not bring herself to attract his attention to the child or herself.  Phenie had plenty of spirit; she could run down to the bunk-house—­Mrs. Kate heard a door slam then, and shuddered.  Phenie, she judged swiftly, had locked herself into the pantry.

Phenie had.  Or, to be exact, she had run in and slammed the door shut in Ford’s very face, and she was leaning her weight against it.  Mrs. Kate, pressing the struggling Buddy closer to her, heard voices, a slight commotion, and then silence.  She could bear no more.  She threw a shawl over her head, grasped Buddy firmly by the arm, and fled in terror to the bunk-house.

The voices were a brief altercation between Ford and Josephine, on the subject of opening the door, before it was removed violently from its hinges.  The commotion was when Josephine, between tears and laughter, failed to hold the door against the pressure of a strong man upon the other side, and, suddenly giving over the attempt, was launched against a shelf and dislodged three tin pans, which she barely saved from falling with a great clatter to the floor.  The silence—­the silence should explain itself; but since humanity is afflicted with curiosity, and demands details, this is what occurred immediately after Josephine had been kissed four times for her stubbornness, and the pans had been restored to their proper place.

“Say!  Are you my wife?” was the abrupt question which Ford asked, and kissed her again while he waited for an answer.

“Why, yes—­what makes you ask that?  Of course I am; that is—­” Josephine twisted in his arms, so that she could look into his face.  She did not laugh at him, however.  She was staring at him with that keen, measuring look which had so incensed him, when he had first met her.  “I don’t understand you at all, Ford,” she said at last, with a frown of puzzlement.  “I never have, for that matter.  I’d think I was beginning to, and then you would say or do something that would put me all at sea.  What do you mean, anyway?”

Ford told her what he meant; told her humbly, truthfully, with never an excuse for himself.  And it speaks well for the good sense of Josephine that she heard him through with neither tears, laughter, nor anger to mar his trust in her.