"I'll ride right up to Nancy Fleet's tomorrow. I'll get to the bottom o' this business. And you keep yer young nose outa my affairs, Jess'my!"
"Oh, I'll do that—gladly. That's easy."
"Just so! Then keep her outa this fella Drew's, too!"
"That's another matter entirely," she told him. "And I may as well add right here, while we're on the subject, that I wish you to keep your nose out of my affairs. There, now—we've ruined our digestions by quarrelling at meal-time. Bolar hasn't, though—I'm glad somebody appreciates my biscuits."
Bolar grinned, and his face grew red. Bolar was deeply in love with his step-sister, four years his senior; but a day in the saddle, with a sharp spring wind in one's face, will scarce permit the tender passion to interfere with a lover's appetite.
Old Adam enveloped himself in his customary brooding silence. He was a holy terror when aroused, and would then spout torrents of words; but ordinarily he was morosely quiet, taciturn. He would not have hesitated to apply his quirt to his twenty-six-year-old son Moffat, as he had threatened to do, had not that young man possessed the wisdom born of experience to refrain from defying him. But with his step-daughter it was different. For some inexplicable reason he "took more sass" from her than from any other person living. Deep down in his scarred old heart, perhaps, there was hidden a deferential respect and fatherly admiration for this breezy, strong-minded girl with whom a strange fortune had placed him in daily contact.
"Please eat your supper, Mr. Selden," Jessamy at last sincerely pleaded, when the old man's frowning abstraction had continued for minutes.
Dutifully, without a word, he scraped his chair closer to the table and fell to noisily. But he did not join in the conversation, which now became general.
It was a custom in the House of Selden for each diner to leave the table when he had finished eating—a custom antedating Jessamy's advent in the family, which she never had been able to correct. Bolar had long since bolted the last morsel of food that his tough young stomach would permit, and had hurried to a half-completed rawhide lariat. Moffat soon followed him out. Then Jessamy's mother arose and left the room. This left together at the table the deliberate eater, Jessamy, and the old man, who had not yet caught up with the time he had given to the letter.
He too finished before the girl, having completed his supper in the same untalkative mood. Now, however, he spoke to her as he pushed back his chair and rose.