"To all intents and purposes she's a dependent of yours, isn't she?"
Judd parried the question. He was indifferent enough as to what might happen to Louise Treharne: he regarded her as an interloper, and he was disgruntled over her studiously aloof treatment of him. But it had become a habit with him to parry Jesse's questions since the occasion when his over-expansiveness in replying to a few seemingly innocent and unmeditated questions from Jesse had resulted in the sound "market" trouncing which his one-time pupil had inflicted upon him.
"What the devil difference does it make?" was Judd's reply. "She has your number all right, and that's all you need to know, isn't it?" and he chuckled again.
Jesse waited again until Judd's glee had subsided, then resumed.
"She has to look to you to make provision for her needs—clothes, hats, ribbons, furbelows, that sort of thing—doesn't she?" he inquired with the coolness of one who does not mean to be rebuffed.
"Oh, forget it," said Judd, a little grumpily now. "Don't try to pin me, Jesse. I don't spout about these things. She's living under one of my roofs, is a member of one of my households. And she regards you as—well, as a considerably-drowned water-bug. Why don't you let it go at that? There are more women in the world than there are red ants or railroad ties. Can't you take your medicine—stand for the defeat?"
"Not in this particular case," was Jesse's perfectly frank reply; he could be frank when there was no possibility of a "come-back." "What's more, I don't intend to. Just make up your mind to that, will you?"
"Oho!" said Judd, struck by the intentional rawness which Jesse had put into his last phrase. "That's the tune, is it?"
"That house of yours on the Drive isn't the place for the young woman," said Jesse. Judd knew that he wasn't assuming any virtuous strain, but merely leading up to a point. "You ought to know that—as the father of a family."
"You're becoming confoundedly erect in your ideas, aren't you?" snorted Judd. "And I've told you before that I won't have you dabbling in my private affairs. Just cut out your harpings, in this connection, upon my family and all of that sort of thing, understand?"