When Santa Fé come to see faro-banking for melodeons wasn't money-making, he passed out word to the Hen to start up her part of the circus--and in the Hen come, looking real pretty in her white frock, and put her hand on his shoulder married-like and says: "Now, my dear, it isn't fair for you gentlemen to keep us ladies waiting another minute longer. We want our share in the evening's amusement. Do put the cards away and let us have our dance." And then she says to the little man, nice and friendly: "My husband is so eager to get our melodeon--and we really do need it badly, of course--that I have trouble with him every night to make him stop the game and give us ladies the dance that we do so enjoy." And then she says on to Charley again: "How has the melodeon fund come out to-night, my dear?" "Very well indeed. Very well indeed, my angel," Charley says back to her. "Eleven dollars and a half have been added to that sacred deposit; and the contributions have been so equally distributed that no one of us will feel the trifling loss. But in interrupting our game, my dear, you are quite right--as you always are. Our guest is not taking part in it; and--as he cannot be expected to feel, as we do, a pleasurable excitement in the augmentation of our cherished little hoard--we owe it to him to pass to a form of harmless diversion in which he can have a share." And then he says to the little man: "I am sure, sir, that Mrs. Charles will be charmed to have you for her partner in the opening dance of what we playfully term our ball." "The pleasure will be mine," says the little man--he was a real friendly polite little old feller--and up he gets and bows to the Hen handsome and gives her his arm: and then in he went with her to the dance-hall, with Santa Fé and the rest of us following on. It give us a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while José--he was the fiddler, José was--was a tuning up, you wouldn't a-knowed where you was! It was a square dance to start in with: with the little man and the Hen, and Charley and Kerosene Kate, a-facing each other; and Denver Jones with Carrots--that was the only name she ever had in Palomitas--and Shorty Smith and Juanita, at the sides. Them three was the girls the Hen had done best with; and she'd fixed 'em off so well they most might have passed for back-East school-ma'ams--at least, in a thickish crowd. Everybody else just stood around and looked on--and that time, with all the Forest Queen ways of managing dancing upset, it was the turn of the Palomitas folks to think they'd struck a dream! The little man, of course, didn't know he'd struck anything but what went on always--and the way he kicked around spirited on them short little fat legs of his was just a sight to see!