git away to a camp where the hands is
men, an' not wet-nurses!"

"That's all right, Red!" said the Boss. "I kin make allowances for yer
gittin' riled, considerin' the jolt Walley's rude interruption give
ye! He hadn't no right to interrupt, nor no call to. This ain't no
camp-meetin'. The boys have a right to swear all they like. Why,
'twouldn't be noways natural in camp ef the boys couldn't swear!
somethin'd hev to bust before long. An' the boys can't be expected to
go a-tiptoe and talk prunes an' prisms, all along o' a little
yaller-haired kid what's come to brighten up the old camp fer us. That
wouldn't be sense! But all we've got to mind is jest this--_nothin'
vile!_ That's all, boys. We'll worry along without that!"

When the Boss spoke, he liked to explain himself rather fully. When he
ceased, no one had a word to say. Every one was satisfied but Johnson;
and he was constrained to seem so. There was an oppressive silence for
some seconds. It was broken by the soft treble of Rosy-Lilly, who had
been standing before the Boss and gazing up into his face with awed
attention throughout the harangue.

"What did you say, Dave?" she piped, her hands clasped behind her
back.

"Somethin' as shall never tech you, Rosy-Lilly!" declared Johnson,
snatching up the child and bearing her off to bed, amid a roar of
laughter which saved Dave Logan the embarrassment of a reply.

For a time, now, Rosy-Lilly left McWha alone, so markedly that it
looked as if Walley Johnson or Jimmy Brackett had admonished her on
the subject. She continued, indeed, to cast at him eyes of pleading
reproach, but always from a distance, and such appeals rolled off
McWha's crude perception like water off a musk rat's fur. He had
nothing "agin her," as he would have put it, if only she would keep
out of his way. But Rosy-Lilly, true to her sex, was not vanquished by
any means, or even discouraged. She was only biding her time. Bird
Pigeon, who was something of a beau in the Settlements, understood
this, and stirred the loyal wrath of Walley Johnson by saying so.

"There ain't nawthin' about Red McWha to make Rosy-Lilly keer shucks
fer 'im, savin' an' except that she can't git him!" said Bird. "She's
that nigh bein' a woman a'ready, if she _be_ but five year old!"

Johnson fixed him with his disconcerting eye, and retorted witheringly--

"Ye thinks ye knows a pile about women, Bird Pigeon. But the kind ye
knows about ain't the kind Rosy-Lilly's agoin