"You don't get on any too fast with your making up to la garche, mon
gars," he said in the patois again.
"Aw--Tom!" remonstrated Peter, very red in the face at this ruthless
laying bare of his approaches.
"Get ahead, man! Put your arm round her neck and give her a kiss. That's
the way to fetch 'em."
At which Nance jumped up with fiery face and sparks in her eyes and left
the room, and Gard, who understood no word of what had passed, yet
understood without possibility of doubt that Tom's speech had been
mortally offensive to his sister, and set him down in his own mind as of
low esteem and boorish disposition.
As for Peter, to whom such advice was as useless as the act would have
been impossible at that stage of the proceedings, he was almost as much
upset as Nance herself. He got up with a shamefaced--
"Aw, Tom, boy, that was not good of you," and made for his hat, while
Tom sat with a broad grin at the result of his delicate diplomacy, and
Gard's great regret was that it was not possible for him to take the
hulking fellow by the neck and bundle him out of doors.
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