Again that impersonal nod.
“Well, I just wanted to ask you if––if you really thought it was––if you think he ain’t got no chance at all?”
The eagerness of that trembling old voice was not to be ignored any longer. But Morehouse couldn’t help but recollect the eager circle of “Ayes” which had flanked the Judge that other night.
“What of it?” he inquired coolly. “What if he hasn’t? I though Jed Conway was the particular pride of your locality!”
Old Jerry’s beady eyes widened. There was no mistaking the positive dislike in that round face, any more than one could misunderstand the antagonism of that round-faced man’s words.
For weeks Morehouse had been puzzling over a question which he could not answer––something which, for all the intimacy that had sprung up between himself and Denny Bolton, he had never felt able to ask of the boy with the grave eyes and graver lips. Even since the conference in Hogarty’s little office, when he had agreed to the ex-lightweight’s plan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been that day when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny’s eagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for.
Now, that afternoon, on the very eve of that battle, he sat there in the thickening dusk, unconscious of the passage of time, and listened to the explanation that came pouring from Old Jerry’s lips, haltingly at first, and then in a steady falsetto stream, and learned the answer to it.
The old mail carrier didn’t know what he was doing. His one desire was to vindicate himself in the cold eyes of the man before him. But he told it well and he did not spare himself.