he neck--looking that quiet and tidy and
real lady-like you'd never a-notioned what a mixed lot she was
truly--and she'd helped the other girls rig out as near the same way
as they could come. Some of 'em didn't come far; but they all done as
well as they knowed how to, and so they wasn't to be blamed. Old
Tenderfoot Sal--she was the limit, Sal was--wasn't to be managed no
way; so they just kept her out of the show.

When Santa Fe come to see faro-banking for melodeons wasn't
money-making, he passed out word to the Hen to start up her part of
the circus--and in the Hen come, looking real pretty in her white
frock, and put her hand on his shoulder married-like and says: "Now,
my dear, it isn't fair for you gentlemen to keep us ladies waiting
another minute longer. We want our share in the evening's amusement.
Do put the cards away and let us have our dance." And then she says to
the little man, nice and friendly: "My husband is so eager to get our
melodeon--and we really do need it badly, of course--that I have
trouble with him every night to make him stop the game and give us
ladies the dance that we do so enjoy." And then she says on to Charley
again: "How has the melodeon fund come out to-night, my dear?"

"Very well indeed. Very well indeed, my angel," Charley says back to
her. "Eleven dollars and a half have been added to that sacred
deposit; and the contributions have been so equally distributed that
no one of us will feel the trifling loss. But in interrupting our
game, my dear, you are quite right--as you always are. Our guest is
not taking part in it; and--as he cannot be expected to feel, as we
do, a pleasurable excitement in the augmentation of our cherished
little hoard--we owe it to him to pass to a form of harmless diversion
in which he can have a share." And then he says to the little man: "I
am sure, sir, that Mrs. Charles will be charmed to have you for her
partner in the opening dance of what we playfully term our ball."

"The pleasure will be mine," says the little man--he was a real
friendly polite little old feller--and up he gets and bows to the Hen
handsome and gives her his arm: and then in he went with her to the
dance-hall, with Santa Fe and the rest of us following on. It give us
a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they
being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party
back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while
Jose--he was