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Mia was glad that Tiny had never openly flirted with her, and she knew why that was so. He didn’t dare try anything with her under the protective eye of her father.
Mia shuddered even now as she watched Tiny cast her a mischievous glance over his shoulder and nod to the deck of cards in his right shirt pocket.
She knew that he was anxious to show her another trick, although she was tired of everything he said, or did.
All of her troubled thoughts were swept away when Mia’s beautiful yellow canary began warbling, perhaps in response to some yellow finches that were darting here and there close to the scow, singing their own sweet songs.
Mia went to the spot where she kept the cage secured just inside the shade of the shed.
She leaned down and gazed directly into her bird’s black eyes.
“Did you hear the finches, Georgina?” she asked in a soft, melodious tone. “You sweet thing. I have never heard you sing any more beautifully than you are singing this morning.”
She heard a soft mocking laugh and glanced quickly over at Tiny.
She stiffened when she saw that he had stopped to stare at her bird, then at her.
She knew that he despised her canary. He complained all the time about the “racket” it made.
His dislike of the canary had proved to Mia just what sort of man he was. Anyone who couldn’t love something as sweet as her tiny canary surely didn’t have a good bone in his body!
Feeling uneasy in the presence of this man, Mia moved closer to her father.
She glanced at Tiny again, then looked into her father’s sad eyes. “Papa, I don’t mean to make any more trouble for you, but I just can’t feel comfortable with the likes of that man on our scow,” she murmured. “Papa, please consider finding someone else at the next town? Please? I just don’t trust this man. And I don’t understand how you can.”
“He has done us no harm,” her father said. “And you know how hard it is to find help these days, especially someone who don’t mind bein’ away from family on these long river journeys.”
He paused, cleared his throat, then said, “Anyway, we truly don’t have much longer before we’ll be home. Can’t you ignore him for the few weeks it will take us to get there?”
“It seems so long, Papa, before we’ll arrive home,” Mia said, swallowing hard.
“But it truly isn’t,” Harry said. He glanced over his shoulder, at the tiny weasel of a man.
Then he gazed into Mia’s soft green eyes. He raised a hand and gently drew his long, lean fingers through her waist-length auburn hair. “Be patient?” he said, giving her the smile she adored. “For me, Mia? For me?”
“Papa, usually when you give me that smile, I can’t say no to you, but this is different. I just can’t stand that man,” Mia said, visibly shuddering. “Please reconsider. Surely someone will be eager to take Tiny’s place for the amount of money you are paying for assistance.”
Harry placed a hand on her soft, round cheek. He gazed intently into her eyes. “If it means that much to you, honey, yes, I guess I’ll do what you suggest, but it might delay our trip for several days,” he said. “It ain’t that easy, you know, to get reliable help.”
“Yes, I know,” Mia murmured. “Tiny Brown is proof enough of that.”
Tiny’s ears had picked up the whole argument and he knew now that he would be out of a job before long. He resented Mia’s interference with every fiber of his being.
It was hard for him to find jobs.
Anywhere.
He seemed to rankle everyone’s nerves almost from the very day he was hired to do this or that!
Well, this time he was not going to be let go so easily. He was going to show this miss prissy a thing or two before being given the boot.
He eyed the canary that she was so proud of.
His eyes lit up with a sudden idea.
By jove, he would use that canary to get back at Mia!
He would wait for just the right opportunity to open the door to the cage and watch the bird fly to its freedom.
