I had already noted the very becoming dull blue house gown she wore. Quite with an air she carried it. To be sure, it was not suitable to her duties. The excitements of the day, I suppose, had rendered me a bit sterner than is my wont. Perhaps a little authoritative. “A handsome gown,” I replied icily, “but one would hardly choose it for the work you are performing.” “Rubbish!” she retorted plainly. “I wanted to look nice--I had to go in there lots of times. And I wanted to be dressed for to-night.” “Why to-night, may I ask?” I was all at once uncomfortably curious. “Why, the boys are coming for me. They’re going to take No-no home, then we’re all going to the movies. They’ve got a new bill at the Bijou, and Buck Edwards especially wants me to see it. One of the cowboys in it that does some star riding looks just like Buck--wavy chestnut hair. Buck himself is one of the best riders in the whole Kulanche.” The woman seemed to have some fiendish power to enrage me. As she prattled thus, her eyes demurely on the glass she dried, I felt a deep flush mantle my brow. She could never have dreamed that she had this malign power, but she was now at least to suspect it. “Your Mr. Edwards,” I began calmly enough, “may be like the cinema actor: the two may be as like each other as makes no difference--but you are not going.” I was aware that the latter phrase was heated where I had merely meant it to be impressive. Dignified firmness had been the line I intended, but my rage was mounting. She stared at me. Astonished beyond words she was, if I can read human expressions. “I am!” she snapped at last. “You are not!” I repeated, stepping a bit toward her. I was conscious of a bit of the rowdy in my manner, but I seemed powerless to prevent it. All my culture was again but the flimsiest veneer. “I am, too!” she again said, though plainly dismayed. “No!” I quite thundered it, I dare say. “No, no! No, no!” The nipper cried out from his box. Not until later did it occur to me that he had considered himself to be addressed in angry tones. “No, no!” I thundered again. I couldn’t help myself, though silly rot I call it now. And then to my horror the mother herself began to weep. “I will!” she sobbed. “I will! I will! I will!” “No, no!” I insisted, and I found myself seizing her shoulders, not knowing if I mightn’t shake her smartly, so drawn-out had the woman got me; and still I kept shouting my senseless “No, no!” at which the nipper was now yelling. She struggled her best as I clutched her, but I seemed to have the strength of a dozen men; the woman was nothing in my grasp, and my arms were taking their blind rage out on her. Secure I held her, and presently she no longer struggled, and I was curiously no longer angry, but found myself soothing her in many strange ways. I mean to say, the passage between us had fallen to be of the very shockingly most sentimental character. “You are so masterful!” she panted.