"Well?"
"Well, somebody did think so. I've thought so for three years, and so I'm here." Jean found that her breath was coming fast, and that as she leaned back against a post and gripped the rail on either side, her arms were quivering like the legs of a frightened horse. Still, her voice had sounded calm enough.
Art Osgood sat with his shoulders drooped forward a little, and painstakingly snipped off tiny bits of the splinter. After a short silence, he turned his head and looked at her again.
"I shouldn't think you'd want to stir up that trouble after all this while," he said. "But women are queer. I can't see, myself, why you'd want to bother hunting me up on account of—that."
Jean weighed his words, his look, his manner, and got no clue at all to what was going on back of his eyes. On the surface, he was just a tanned, fairly good-looking young man who has been reluctantly drawn into an unpleasant subject.
"Well, I did consider it worth while bothering to hunt you up," she told him flatly. "If you don't think it's important, you at least won't object to going back with me?"
Again his glance went to her face, plainly startled. "Go back with you?" he repeated. "What for?"
"Well—" Jean still had some trouble with her breath and to keep her quiet, smooth drawl, "let's make it a woman's reason. Because."
Art's face settled to a certain hardness that still was not hostile. "Becauses don't go," he said. "Not with a girl like you; they might with some. What do you want me to go back for?"
"Well, I want you to go because I want to clear things up, about Johnny Croft. It's time—it was cleared up."