Burls had risen, and Milly struck the sniggering clown an angry cuff on the head to silence him. He threw up his elbow to shield himself, hysterically weak. She thrust him away from them. He stumbled and fell into another chair, where he buried his face in his hands, limp.
"Get 'm a drink," Sutley pleaded, trying to fan the old man with his open hands, and apologizing frantically: "That 's all right, now. It need n't make no difference to you an' Milly. I c'n earn enough fer her an' me, an' you c'n have what she makes. You need n't mind me aroun'. It 's natural fer her to want to get married, an' it 's better fer her to marry some one in the bus'ness."
Yost roused himself to a sort of expiring gesture of contempt and fell back gasping.
"It need n't make no diff'rence to you," Sutley kept on. "Burls had n't nothin' to do with it. We did it so we would n't have to go back to the circus. That need n't make no diff'rence to you. You need n't get mad about it."
His feeble gestures, his anxious tone, his expression of awkward solicitude—all were unconsciously clownish and laughable. And when Milly came back with a bottle and a glass, she put him aside, in a sort of distracted perception of his absurdity. She poured a drink for her father and held it to his lips. He looked up at Sutley in a weak disgust that would have expressed itself plaintively if it could have expressed itself at all.
