“I should say so,” said Somers, rather uncomfortably.
Jack hardly heeded the words. He was watching the face.
“You’re a stranger here. You’re from the old country. You’re different from us. But you’re a man we want, and you’re a man we’ve got to keep. I know it. What? What do you say? I cant trust you, can’t I?”
“What with?” asked Somers.
“What with?” Jack hesitated. “Why everything!” he blurted. “Everything! Body and soul and money and every blessed thing. I can trust you with everything! Isn’t that right?”
Somers looked with troubled eyes into the dark, dilated, glowing eyes of the other man.
“But I don’t know what it means,” he stammered. “Everything! It means so much, that it means nothing.”
Jack nodded his head slowly.
“Oh yes it does,” he reiterated. “Oh yes it does.”
“Besides,” said Somers, “why should you trust me with anything, let alone everything. You’ve no occasion to trust me at all—except—except as one neighbour trusts another, in common honour.”