IV
For a brief moment Joan sat agape, meeting incredulously the keen, contemptuous gaze of her father. Then she pulled herself together with determination to be neither browbeaten nor overborne.
"Where'd you hear that about me?" she demanded ominously.
Thursby shook his ponderous head: "It makes no difference—"
"It makes a lot of difference to me!" she cut in, sharply contentious. "You might's well tell me, because I won't talk to you if you don't."
Butch brushed the brim of his hat an inch above his eyes and threw her a glance of approbation. Thursby hesitated, his large, mottled face sullen and dark in the bluish illumination provided by the single gas-jet wheezing above the table. Then reluctantly he gave in.
"Old Inness was in the store this evening. He said—"
"Never mind what he said! I guess I know. Gussie's been shooting off her face about me at home. And of course old Inness hadn't nothing better to do than to run off and tell you everything he knew!"
"Then you don't deny it?" Thursby insisted.
"I don't have to. It's true. No, I don't deny it," she returned, aping his manner to exasperation.