"No, I don't remember anything about Jabez," he said. "And Elvira and Elmina and John I never heard mentioned. Grandfather Bankhead had no near relations that I know of except his brother Jasper and his cousin Lorinda, who grew up with him."
"I seem to remember something about grandmother's cousin Jasper," Lucetta put in. "Didn't something happen to him—something out of the usual?"
"Yes," was the prompt reply. "He disappeared—went to the Far West when he was a young man and was never heard of afterward. Grandfather often wondered what had become of him, and in his later years spoke of him quite frequently."
Lucetta went on with her mending, the fish-bone needle making her progress primitively slow. Prime got up and strolled down to the river-bank. When he returned he went around to her side of the fire to say:
"I'm mighty glad we have found out that we are cousins, Lucetta; twice glad, for your sake. It makes things a bit easier for you, doesn't it?"
She did not look up.
"Why should it?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, I don't know; we have both been throwing tin cans and brickbats at the conventions; but I haven't any idea that we have killed them off permanently. And they die harder in a woman than in a man. We have jollied things along pretty well, so far, but that isn't saying that I haven't known how hard it must have been for you. As matters stand now, I am your natural protector."
She looked up with the quaint little smile that he had learned to know, to interpret, and to love.
"What difference does the relationship make, Donald, so long as you are what you are? And what difference would it make if you happened to be the other kind of man?"