"I never asked him to do anything--I never told him." "No, you didn't," said Cal Blount, gravely. "You sort of allowed that he was a meddling sneak-thief, Miss Lady. I want to say right here that I allow a lot different from that. Now, if I know that man at all, he ain't going to come around you and make any sort of talk. You'll have to go to _him_." "I'll not!" said Miss Lady, again eliciting a yelp from one of the puppies in her lap. "There, there, now," said Blount, gently. "Just you hold on a minute. Don't say you will or you won't. I just want to ask you one thing, Miss Lady. Who do you reckon you are? _I_ know you're Miss Lady, and that's all I want to know. But who do _you_ think you are?" The kindness of the keen gray eye disarmed Miss Lady. In the sheer instinct of youth and vitality she spread out her arms wide, her face turned up halfway toward the sky, her lips half-parted: "Oh, don't ask me, Colonel Cal," said she. "I'm alive, and it's spring. I danced in the big room this morning, Colonel Cal! Isn't it enough, just to be alive?" Thus she evaded that question, which she had so long shunned as impossible of answer. "Yes, it's enough, Miss Lady," said the old planter, gravely. "It's enough for you. But now, we men who are your friends have got to take _care_ of you. We've got to do the thinking. Now, I'm saying that Jack Eddring has done a heap of thinking for you that you don't know anything about." "Oh, I know he sort of took charge of things down there at New Orleans. He told me a lot. And then--about Mr. Decherd--" "Yes, about Mr. Decherd. I've never talked much to you about that, because the time hadn't come. Now I want to say that Jack Eddring had more right to throw that man Decherd off the boat than ever you understood. I'd have done it the same way, only maybe rougher. We're friends of yours. You're ours, you know. You haven't got any mother. Thank God, you haven't got any husband. You haven't got any father. Now tell me, Miss Lady, who do you reckon Henry Decherd is, and what do you think he wanted to do?" Miss Lady, suddenly sober, turned toward him a face grave and thoughtful. A certain portion of the old morbidness returned to her. "It's not kind of you, Colonel Cal," said she, "to remind me that I'm nobody. I'm worse than an orphan. I'm worse than a foundling. How I endure staying here is more than I can tell. Shall I go away again?"