Jim drew up his clenched fist, showing a very respectable bunch of muscle. "More than there ever used to be, eh?" he asked, smiling broadly. Al whistled, stepped back for a better look at the miracle, and whistled. "And yet they say they never come back. Hm-m-m--how'd you do it?" "Working. Rousty on a dredge in Oklahoma." "Rousty?" "Toted coal to the firemen, later got to firing myself--on the night shift. We kept her going steady. Funny thing, irrigating way out there, t'hell an' gone, in the middle of the frogs barking and the cattle bawling feeding your old thirty-horse and watching the old scoop lifting out her yard of sludge every six minutes. You got so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, but it ain't, is it!" "What'd they pay!" "Fifty and board. But the money's being in the business. Me and our day trainman was talking of getting shares in a dredge. There's work there for a thousand years. Where's Georgia?" Al nodded his head toward her door. "So's not to see me!" Al nodded. "I came clear from there in the busy season for the sight of her and I didn't come alone. I've three hundred here," said Jim, taking a roll of bills from his pocket. "And to be turned down this way, with my heart full of love----" He was greatly moved and he showed it, for his lip trembled and his voice shook. Al was sorry for him. "Aw, she'll come around. She's got a stubborn streak, you know that, but she does right in the end. Give her time. I'll talk to her." Jim felt sure that she must have heard their conversation, especially the last part of it, for he had talked quite distinctly and he remembered from the old days how readily all the sounds in the flat penetrated into that room. He got on his hands and knees and looked at the crack beneath her door to see if her room was lighted. "She's sitting in the dark," he whispered, "Would it be all right to knock!" "I don't know," said Al uncertainly. Jim knocked softly, then a little more loudly, but there was no answer. He put his ear to the door to listen, then tip-toed away. "She's crying," he whispered to Al, "crying to beat the band. Those heavy deep kind of sobs. I could barely hear her. Must have her face in the pillow. Now what do you know about that!" "That's a good sign," said Al, "means she's coming around. When she just turns white and don't speak----" Jim privately opined that he understood Georgia's moods vastly better than Al ever would, and was in no need of instruction on this subject. "You mean when she has one of her silences," he said, giving the thing its proper name. "Yes, that's when you can't handle her. But now, she's begun to melt already. So to-morrow evening come for supper, and I bet my shirt you are all made up in thirty minutes." Jim wrung his hand. "You're a thoroughbred, Al--and take this from me now, I've learned sense. If I get her back, I'll keep her. No more booze, never one drop."