A hand pressed tightly to her breast
seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there.
"I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like
you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you
stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get
the straight of what you told us that night you left. It--it ain't
possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking
about some other gal?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that
will change your opinion of me."
"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in
that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our
opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."
"Cap'n Ball!"
"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as
you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did,
through a trick--somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem
to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that
somehow--we don't know how--what you told us that night and what you
done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."
She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and
mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.
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