Terry was not yet breakfasting. Down on one knee, poking viciously into the fire-box of an extremely old and dilapidated stove, she was seeking, after the time-honored way of her sex, to make the fire burn better. Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the blazing oak wood. Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her, making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots. About her throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf. The thought struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of decay, and that alone in the wreckage Terry Temple made a gay spot of color, that alone Terry Temple was determined to keep her place in the sun.
Terry, having poked a goodly part of the fire out, made a face at what remained and got to her feet.
"I've been thinking about you," she said.
"Fine!" said Packard. "You can tell me while we have our coffee."
But he did not fail to mark that she had given him no ready smile by way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically. In her morning attitude there was little to lead him to hope for a free-and-easy chat across a breakfast-table.
"You strike me," said Terry abruptly and emphatically, "as a pretty slick proposition."
"Why so?" asked Packard interestedly.
"Because," said Terry. For a moment he thought that she was going to stop there. But after a thoughtful pause, during which she looked straight at him with eyes which were meant to be merely clear and judicial but which were just faintly troubled, she went on: "Because you're a Packard, to begin with."
"Look here," protested young Packard equably, "I didn't think that of you; honestly, I didn't. How are you and I ever going to get anywhere… in the way of being friends, I mean … if you start out by blaming me for what my disreputable old scamp of a grandfather does?"
Terry sniffed openly.