"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had been sitting. "So they har."

The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette.

"Ar, ee—yes—s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to attention, with her head on one side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet of gold.

"'Usbands har queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't they?"

Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously, and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded:

"Are they?"

"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white.

There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall. Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of her hips that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable, serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said:

"Bob—er—Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway, 'e says."

Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs. She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled, and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was newly-barbered—shaved to the blood.

He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words out of the corner of his mouth:

"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?"

Daisy looked a little puzzled.

"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?"

"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips."

"Just the one grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this—see?"

Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently.

"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for your board bill. You pay in advance—see?"

Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and, with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic.

As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he leaned close.

"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and paddled hers.

Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his pocket.

"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him when he went out."

Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his palms—a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very quintessence of humor—the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, and exclaimed:

"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!"

"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned—and looked into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek.

"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his paternal way.

"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?"

Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy. His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as a nutmeg-grater, closed about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made the girl wince a little.

Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse—less because of its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr. Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes, therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little affirmative nod.

"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus here? Has this lad been sassin' ye?"

Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added, contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my money in it, so he did."

"Took your what?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!"

"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You get to hell out o' here, and get your team out. You got to meet that south train in fifteen minutes".

Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on the counter.

"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in fifteen seconds. If ye don't—I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what that means, Markey."

Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth.

Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on the numbered rack behind the counter. Then—he sprang into action!

So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the counter. Then the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide.

"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and I'll kill yeh."

"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide—

"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll give the jane her purse."

"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin' here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl standin' here—or have ye no shame to ye? Dry up, now!"

This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down viciously, fell with a slap.

"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a little as he glanced down at it.

Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for a throw.

Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his back carelessly on Markey and missile.

"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once before, an' we had a—a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness, "about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all right for a man when he's grew up; but some men never outgrows the tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense he's got, this world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now."

He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked around.

"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out 'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty o' time, too."

With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across the rotunda—the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins—and made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"—this being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy—glad enough to do it, too, for her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness—took the key Markey sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19.