She was silent for a moment, and he saw her hand go up and prop her chin while she considered what she could say next.
"They's so much to tell," she confessed, "that I can't put it short. I'll tell you this much, Black Jack—"
"That isn't my name, if you please."
"It'll be your name if you stay around these parts with Dad very long," she replied, with an odd emphasis. "But where you been raised, Terry? And what you been doing with yourself?"
He felt that this giving of the first name was a tribute, in some subtle manner. It enabled him, for instance, to call her Kate, and he decided with a thrill that he would do so at the first opportunity. He reverted to her question.
"I suppose," he admitted gloomily, "that I've been raised to do pretty much as I please—and the money I've spent has been given to me."
The girl shook her head with conviction.
"It ain't possible," she declared.
"Why not?"
"No son of Black Jack would live off somebody's charity."