She said “Shucks.” She sat up, then squirmed off his lap and to her feet. “So you won’t give it to me? You just won't?”
“No,” he told her soberly. She turned away, but presently she stopped again and looked back at him.
“Give you twenty-five dollars for it.”
“No.”
She said “Shucks” again, and she went on on her brown silent feet, and was gone. (Your name is like a little golden bell hung in my heart, and when I think of you. . .) The Nausikaa sped on. It was twilight abruptly; soon, a star.
seven o’clock
The place did appear impregnable, but then he had got used to feeling it behind him in his chair, where he knew nothing was going to happen to it. Besides, to change now, after so many days, would be like hedging on a bet. . . . Still, to let those two old bums kid him about it . . . He paused in the door of the saloon.
The others were seated and well into their dinner, but before four vacant places that bland eternal grapefruit, sinister and bland as taxes. Some of them hadn’t arrived: he’d have time to run back to his room and leave it. And let one of them drunkards throw it out the window for a joke?
Mrs. Wiseman carrying a tray said briskly: “Gangway, Pete,” and he crowded against the wall for her to pass, and then the niece turned her head and saw him. “Belly up,” she said, and he heard a further trampling drawing near. He hesitated a second, then he thrust his hat into the little cubbyhole between the two shelves. He'd risk it to-night, anyway. He could still sort of keep an eye on it. He took his seat.
Fairchild’s watch surged in: a hearty joviality that pres-
