th,
salary,' he says, and I says I'll do it, quicker than scat. And that's
all there is to say, and if Charlie wasn't a Chinaman I'd kiss him in
the bargain!" With a quick, impatient gesture she made a daub at her
eye and flecked away a jewel.

Van hauled at his collar, which was loose enough around his neck.

"Say, boys," he said, "think of Algy, being kissed in the bargain. I
always thought he got his face at a bargain counter."

"That's all right, Bronson Van Buren!" answered Mrs. Dick indignantly,
"but I never come that near to kissin' you!"

Van suddenly swooped down upon her, picked her up bodily, and kissed
her on the cheek. Then he placed her again on the box.

"Why didn't you say what you wanted, earlier?" he said. "Now, don't
talk back. I want you to harken intently. I'm perfectly willing that
Algy should waste his sweetness on the desert air of your
boarding-house, if it pleases you and him. I'm willing these old
ring-tailed galoots should continue to eat his fascinating poisons, and
I certainly hope he'll draw his monthly wage, but I'm going to be too
busy to board in any one place, and Algy's salary would make a load I
must certainly decline to carry."

Mrs. Dick looked at the horseman in utter disappointment.

"You won't come? Maybe you mean my house ain't good enough?"

Napoleon was somewhat excited by prospects of again beholding Elsa, of
whose absence he was wholly unaware.

"We won't go, neither!" he declared. "Doggone you, Van, you know we
won't go without the skipper, and you're shovin' us right out of
heaven!"

Gettysburg added: "I don't want to say nuthin', but my stomach will
sure be the seat of anarchy if it has to git cheated out of goin' down
to Mrs. Dick's."

Van was about to reply to them all. He had paused to frame his answer
artfully, eager as he was to foster the comfort of his three old
partners, but wholly unwilling to accept from either Mrs. Dick or
Algernon the slightest hint of aid.

"I admit that a man's reach should be above the other fellow's grasp,
and all that," he started, "but here's the point----"

He was interrupted suddenly. A man, running breathlessly up the slope
and waving his hat in frantic gestures, began to shout as he came.

"Mrs. Dick! Mrs. Dick!" he cried at the top of his voice. "Help!
help! You've got to come!"

Mrs. Dick leaped quickly to her feet to face the oncoming man. It was
old Billy Stitts. He had come from Beth.

"Com