Peggy looked earnestly at Hashknife.
“Why should I? Why do you wish to know about Joe Rich—my opinion of him? Who are you, anyway?”
Hashknife studied his boot-toes for several moments, but finally looked up at her with a grin in his eyes.
“It’s kinda queer,” he admitted. “But I’m one of them funny folks who always asks questions. All my life I’ve asked a lot of questions, Miss Wheeler. Sometimes I find out things. I’m like the feller who said he made up his mind to kiss every pretty woman he met. Somebody said—
“‘I’ll bet you got whipped a lot of times,’ and he said—
“‘Well, yeah, I did, but I shore got a lot of kisses.’
“And that’s the way with me—except that I was after answers instead of kisses.”
Peggy laughed with him.
“But I don’t see yet,” she said. “What good will my opinion do you? What do you want to know about Joe Rich?”
“Well, it’s like this, Miss Wheeler: Yore opinion of him will go quite a ways with me. If I was to come right out and ask yuh if yuh loved Joe Rich in spite of everythin’ he’s done to yuh—what would yuh say?”