"You don't mind if I say that mother and me haven't no use for Jesse?"
"I know that."
"Well, mother put her up to the idea. To get shut of him, she shammed dead. I helped. I say she done right, mum. If she'd let it go at that, I'd take her side right now."
"Billy, was that a real marriage?"
"It was that. She's Jesse's wife all right."
There was something which braced me in his callous frankness. "I hoped," I said. "Go on."
"Well, mother hated Jesse somethin' chronic. Afterward when—well, she had to run for the British possessions, and we met up with Jesse again by accident. He give us a shack and some land, but mother an' me had our pride. How would you like to take charity? Mother hated him still worse, and don't you imagine I'd go back on her. She's my mother.
"Then you married Jesse. Of course, mother and me both knew that Polly was alive. Father knew too—and father was around when no one but us ever seen him. We knew that Polly was alive, and mother would have given Jesse dead away, only we stopped her. Father said it was none of our business. Father liked Jesse, I thought the world of you, so when mother wrote to Polly, we'd burn her letters."
What an escape for us!
"Then you saved mother from burning in that shack, and afterward she hated Jesse worse, because she couldn't hit him for fear of hurting you. Oh, she was mad because she'd got fond of you.