He saw her slim hands curl themselves into small, firm fists as they rested on her lap.
“I can't bear to think that ill can be said of him, even by a wastrel like Captain Palliser,” she said. “He's MINE.”
It made him fumble caressingly at her big knot of soft red hair.
“Thine, is he?” he said. “Thine! Eh, but tha did say that just like thy mother would ha' said it; tha brings the heart i' my throat now and again. That chap's i' luck, I can tell him—same as I was once.”
“He's mine now, whatever happens,” she went on, with a firmness which no skeptic would have squandered time in the folly of hoping to shake. “He's done what I told him to do, and it's ME he wants. He's found out for himself, and so have I. He can have me the minute he wants me—the very minute.”
“He can?” said Hutchinson. “That settles it. I believe tha'd rather take him when he was i' trouble than when he was out of it. Same as tha'd rather take him i' a flat in Harlem on fifteen dollar a week than on fifteen hundred.”
“Yes, Father, I would. It'd give me more to do for him.”
“Eh, eh,” he grunted tenderly, “thy mother again. I used to tell her as the only thing she had agen me was that I never got i' jail so she could get me out an' stand up for me after it. There's only one thing worrits me a bit: I wish the lad hadn't gone away.”
“I've thought that out, though I've not had much time to reason about things,” said Little Ann. “If he's gone away, he's gone to get something; and whatever it happens to be, he'll be likely to bring it back with him, Father.”