lately how my gal Marta is due, first thing we know, to be a growed-up woman.”
‘
“She is, indeed!” replied Jimmy’s mother with an encouraging smile.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s what me an’ Bob here took notice. An’ we’ve been figgerin’ up that mebby it was time she knowed what we know about her. You an’ your son knows the same as everybody does, I reckon, that we ain’t Marta’s real honest-to-God daddies.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton, “but we have never, in any way, mentioned the matter to Marta.”
“No, ma’am,” said Thad, “an’ we ain’t neither.”
“An’ that’s jest what’s the matter now,” put in Bob. “The gal ain’t never been told nothin’.”
Mrs. Burton looked at her son.
“I am sure that you men are right,” said Saint Jimmy. “I have been wanting to talk with you about it. You ought to tell Marta everything you know of her and her people—how she came to you—everything.”
The Pardners consulted each other silently. Then Thad turned to Marta’s teacher; the old prospector’s faded blue eyes were fixed on the younger man’s face with a steady, searching gaze that permitted no evasion, even if Saint Jimmy had been disposed to parry the question.{31}
{31}
“Is there, to your thinkin’, any perticler reason why my gal ought to be told at this perticler time?”
Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.
“No particular reason, so far as I know,” he said. “Of course you realize that there has always been more or less talk. Sooner or later the girl is bound to hear it. She should be fortified with the truth.”
Again Bob and Thad looked at each other helplessly.
“An’ if the truth ain’t jest what you might call fortifyin’—what then?” said Thad at last.
“Yes,” echoed Bob. “What then? What if my pardner an’ me can’t say that all the gossips is talkin’ ain’t so?”
Saint Jimmy did not answer. Mother Burton looked away. Old Thad rubbed his bald head in mournful meditation.
“Doctor Burton,” said Bob slowly, as one feeling his way amid conversational dangers, “Thad an’ me ain’t to say blind, if we be gittin’ old. We
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