Jimmy nodded:
“I suppose so.”
“I don’t know why he didn’t tell us more about himself—about before he came to Tucson, I mean. Perhaps he will some day; but he acts as if he didn’t like to think about it now. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.”
“It is rather important that one have a past, isn’t it, Jimmy?” She smiled as she added: “Rather important that one have the right kind of a past, I mean.”
“To my mind it is quite important,” answered Jimmy soberly. And suddenly he remembered again the story that the Pardners had told.
She nodded thoughtfully.
“You have talked to me a lot about heredity and breeding and good blood and early environment and those things. I suspect it is your being a doctor that makes you consider them as you do. And Mother Burton, she has told me a lot, too, about your ancestors, away back. And so I can see that it is your past and the things you have to remember that make you the kind of a man you are. If you didn’t have the father and mother that you had, and the fathers and mothers that they had, and if you hadn’t had the schools and the friends and the home with carpets and the work of helping people that you have had, why, you wouldn’t be you at all, would you, Jimmy?”
Saint Jimmy moved uneasily. He wished now, in the light of the Pardners’ story and their conclusion as to the birth and parentage of this girl, that he had not included some subjects in his pupil’s course of study.
Marta continued as if, scarcely conscious of her companion’s presence, she were thinking aloud.