The girl flashed their guest an indignant glance. “Attacking dad at his weakest point? For that I should paint him an awful picture of you.”
“With a brush dipped in colors of the truth?”
At her threat and Pape’s meek retort, the old man’s eyes continued to beam their way, as only sightless eyes can beam.
“You needn’t, Jen-Jen. It doesn’t matter what Mr. Pape looks like. Men show less on the outside what they are than women. I’d rather see him as he is inwardly. Already I know that he has both an imagination and a sense of humor. And he is direct with the skookum talk, which doesn’t lend to lies. As for his exterior, I imagine him as moderately sizeable and well-muscled and plain, or you wouldn’t have brought him around.”
“Immoderately plain,” she corrected, still with a punishing air.
“Good. Then I’ve got him—” her parent with a chuckle. “Now it seems to me, if he’s done for us all you say he has, that we owe him some explanation.”
At once Jane’s quasi-disapproval of their quickly established fellowship turned into real.
“Explanation has been our downfall, dad,” she warned. “You know your failing. You trust too much and too soon. You seem to have got worse instead of better—positively—since you went to the war.”
“She’s right, Mr. Lauderdale,” Pape advised. “It is too soon to trust me in skookum or any other foreign language. But you seem shy some sort of help which I’d like to supply if I can. Why waste time explaining? You’re entitled—on face value, you know—to the best I can give. There’ll be plenty of time to explain after we’ve horned off all these nesters that seem to be rooting around your ranch.”
“Another good quality—generosity,” commented the older man in an argumentative way to his daughter. “Don’t you think, dear, that it would be safe enough to tell him a certain amount of the truth, even though he should prove to be an active agent of our enemies? If on the other side, he’d know it anyhow. If on ours, he’d be at a serious disadvantage without some of the facts. We are in no position to despise an ally, Jane, and——”