"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so. It's all in the way you look at things."
"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully explanatory.
"Yes, I know. You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good pasture. Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you out for a lunger. You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is very good, either. He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
She froze at this. "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly. "Here's me and him have flew down here as a bird to our mountings. We was wantin' to hear about a 'face that was the fairest.' We was a-settin' here, calm and peaceful, eating _frijoles_, who intruded? Was it us? Or, what made us intrude?" He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here. If I come and set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name of your pet dog. Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes, and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that time. That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any _other_ fellow what I may think. It _does_ mean that I'm goin' to see fair play."
The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even voice went on.
"How I know things is easy," he continued. "If you think he"--once more nodding his head toward the group beyond--"come down here to hear a op'ry singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't. That was me. He come to give me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see that he gets fair play in them same circumstances--"
"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why. "He's been ill a great deal. I've been alarmed about him. I _always_ go with him."
"Of course. I noticed that. Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after. You come along just to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or cerebrus meningittus, or something else. I understood all that perfectly, ma'am. And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued, tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States, somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know, ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of reasonin'; for _yore_ own face, ma'am,--and I ain't sayin' this with any sort of disrespect to any of my wives,--is about the fairest that Dan Anderson ever did or could see--or me either. I don't reckon, ma'am, that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."