"We'll say I did and that you didn't hear me," he answered suavely.
"What's it matter among friends anyhow?"
"What do you want?" By sheer will power she kept her voice low.
"Your mother's over at the house. I dropped in to say she'll probably stay all night."
"Is your wife worse?"
He lifted the black brows that contrasted so sharply with the pallor of the face. "Really you get ahead of me, my dear. I don't recall ever getting married."
"That's a hateful thing to say," she flamed, and bit her lower lip with small white teeth to keep from telling the squaw-man what she thought of him. The Cree girl he had taken to wife was going down into the Valley of the Shadow to bear him a child while he callously repudiated her.
He opened his fur coat and came to the fireplace. "I can say nicer things—to the right girl," he said, and looked meaningly at her.
"I'll have to go get Susie Lemoine to stay with me," Jessie said hurriedly. "I didn't know Mother wasn't coming home."
She made a move toward a fur lying across the back of a chair.
He laid a hand upon her arm. "What's your rush? What are you dodgin' for, girl? I'm good as Susie to keep the goblins from gettin you."