Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with brighter warmth.
"It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious—"
"Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... He may have been called back to the diggings, you know—if they dug up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would forget the sun was shining."
Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who demolishes the absurd fears of women and children.
"You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place where he had no business in the world to be—"
At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath.
"Oh, it was quite all right for me" she replied mischievously to that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading—"
"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the lassies that lad was—and he had thought him such an aloof one!
"Masquerading as a woman—so he could take me to a reception."
Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words portrayed its less commendable features.