for the many good ones he had known who had gone that way.
"There's that woman again!" said Mrs. Cowgill, her voice sharp with resentful suspicion.
"Ma'am?" Banjo inquired, looking at her in startled surprise.
"Up the street, just comin' out of the Racket Store. She's been runnin' all over town today—she came in on Nine this morning. I'd like to know what she's up to, flippin' around that way."
One might have gathered from Mrs. Cowsgill's hostile attitude that other women had come to McPacken in days past, and flipped around to the public detriment and Mrs. Cowsgill's own personal embarrassment; and that she resented virtuously such invasion, mainly, if not entirely, on account of the stranger going about her mysterious business without first coming to the Cottonwood Hotel, which was a piece of unpardonable impertinence.
"I see her," said Banjo. "She's a peach!"
"She may be a punkin for all you know," Mrs. Cowgill rebuked him scornfully. She bore down on him hard, as if Banjo Gibson's erring judgment in the appraisal of ladies was a thing of notorious public cognizance, a mockery and a merry jest.
"Um-m-m-m!" said Banjo, deep in his chest, a safe and noncommittal sound for a man who has no argument to make, and one to which he can give a portentous shake, even an ominous tremolo, thereby saving his valor and his face.
