for 'em. Oh,
they like him well enough, call him 'Father' real tenderly, and see
that he changes to the heavy flannels on time, but he don't ever thrill
them, and when they order three hundred and fifty dollars' worth of duds
from the Boston Cash Emporium and dress up like a foreign countess, they
don't do it for Father, they do it for the romantic guy in the magazine
serial they're reading, the handsome, cynical adventurer that has such
an awful power over women. They know darned well they won't ever meet
him; still it's just as well to be ready in case he ever should make Red
Gap--or wherever they live--and it's easy with the charge account there,
and Father never fussing more than a little about the bills.

"Not that I blame 'em. We're all alike--innocent enough, with freaks
here and there that ain't. Why, I remember about a thousand years ago I
was reading a book called 'Lillian's Honour,' in which the rightful earl
didn't act like an earl had ought to, but went travelling off over the
moors with a passel of gypsies, with all the she-gypsies falling in love
with him, and no wonder--he was that dashing. Well, I used to think what
might happen if he should come along while Lysander John was out with
the beef round-up or something. I was well-meaning, understand, but at
that I'd ought to have been laid out with a pick-handle. Oh, the nicest
of us got specks inside us--if ever we did cut loose the best one of us
would make the worst man of you look like nothing worse than a naughty
little boy cutting up in Sunday-school. What holds us, of course--we
always dream of being took off our feet; of being carried off by main
force against our wills while we snuggle up to the romantic brute and
plead with him to spare us--and the most reckless of 'em don't often get
their nerve up to that. Well, as I was saying--"

But she was not saying. The thing moved too slowly. And still the woman
paltered with her poisoned tea and made cigarettes and muttered
inconsequently, as when she now broke out after a glance at the
photograph:

"That Ben Sutton certainly runs amuck when he buys his vests. He must
have about fifty, and the quietest one in the lot would make a leopard
skin look like a piker." Again her glance dreamed off to visions.

I seated myself before her with some emphasis and said firmly: "Now,
then!" It worked.

"Wilfred Lennox," she began, "calling himself the hobo poet, gets into
Red Gap one day and makes the rounds wi