ick.

"Blamed if I know. Puts on airs enough. Ain't got much else to put on now,
I guess. No one never told me you and he was chums."

"No more we are. I never had a word with him; but I'm lookin' for a few,"
said Nick. "If he can make good, we may do some business together."

"Huh!" grunted the landlord of the emerald-painted hotel, which had
received its colour in honour and subtle advertisement of the owner's
name--Green. "I don't see you two swappin' canteens any, Nick, but it
ain't for me to bust into your game; and I guess if you sling him a roll
o' your good greenbacks, I'll contrive to switch some o' 'em off the line
into my pocket. That's to say, if you give him a job he can stick to his
bunk and his grub in my hotel."

Mr. Green was just about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of
tobacco-juice aimed at a passing cat, when he checked himself hastily at
sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a
conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and the
lady's--not yet blunted--were spared.

"Who's that?" Nick inquired in a low, respectful voice, when Green had
touched the place where his hat would have been if he had had it on, and
the young woman, bowing with stiff politeness, had gone by.

"What, don't you know?" the landlord of the Eureka Hotel replied with a
question. "But I forgot, you ain't shown up around here much since you
blow'd hack from the East. The fellers say Noo York's kinder got your
goat, and you're sheddin' your feathers in these lonesome wilds, pinin'
after the theayters and swell doin's in the Waldorf-Astoria. But I tell
'em 'nope, that ain't Nick Hilliard. He's true-blue to the Golden West."

"Right you are," said Nick. "All the same, I don't know who the lady is,
and I'm sure I never saw her here, though I have a sort of feelin' I
remember her face."

"Met in another world, mebbe?" Green chuckled. "She ain't no great looker,
though, more's the pity for our young sparks that could do with a noo
beauty at Lucky Star. She's no chicken, either; and her face is the kind
of face that to see once is to forget twice, accordin' to your friend the
Dook, who's great on what he calls epergrams, when he's feelin' well."

"Oh, is he?" Nick's hopeful expression lost some of its glow, for this
trait of the Dook's did not strike him as attractive. "He ain't my friend
yet. But you haven't told me who the lady is. Maybe her name will shake up
my recollec