"You and I?" questioned Lord Kelwin. "No; you and Mr. Kenneth." "I was just thinking--." Lord Kelwin paused, to think of something that would make him a score. "Thinking! Thinking!" as though that were quite incomprehensible. "Mr. Hastings also claimed to be thinking." "Better leave her alone, Kelwin," laughed Kenneth. "She will have the last word. She's like the woman with the scissors." "Good avenin'," said a rich brogue just at hand. "How are you, Patrick?" said Kenneth. "Well, sir. How are yez, Miss?" He gave his slouch hat a jerk. "Good avenin', Lord Kelwin." They walked on together, and the talk drifted to the Gila Club. "I'm really surprised, don't you know," said Lord Kelwin, "at the interest these fellows take in the club." "It's the first dacint thing the byes has had ter go to. Look at that saloon there!" he said, pointing to an overgrown shack, where women of the coarsest type presided. "And look at that opium den," he said, indicating a small building at their right. "And see that haythen," he said, pointing to a female who stood in the door of a saloon, her cheeks painted, and puffing away at a cigarette. "Thim is the things as has sint the byes to desthruction." Kenneth Hastings and Lord Kelwin made no reply. "If yez kape on, schoolma'am," continued Patrick, "yez'll wipe out the saloons and opium places, an' make dacint min an' women out of these poor crathers." He nodded his head. "So pitifully sad!" Esther's vivacious mood suddenly vanished. She was again grave and thoughtful. "Aye," said Patrick, "but yez kin do it, Miss, niver yez doubt it. Yez can do it! Oi used ter go ter the saloon mesilf, but Oi'll go no more, no more. That's what yez has done fur me." Just then Wathemah came running and leaping from Keith's saloon. In a moment he spied them, and ran full tilt towards them. "It makes me sick at heart," Esther said in a low tone to Patrick, "whenever I think of Wathemah living longer in the saloon." "Yez air right, Miss," answered Patrick, "but Misthress Keith is a purty dacint sort av a woman, and she has been good ter the lad." "Yes, I realize that. But I wish I could take him myself." By this time the child was trudging along beside his Beloved. Lord Kelwin liked to tease him, and said in a bantering tone, "What are you always hanging on to Miss Bright's hand for, Wathemah? She don't allow the rest of her admirers to do that." Wathemah placed his other hand over the hand he clasped. "_Me_ teacher _mine_!" he said, defiantly. The men laughed. The teacher placed one hand on the child's head. He rested his cheek against her hand, as he said softly, "Me _mother_." "Your mother, eh?" Lord Kelwin looked amused. "I wish she'd mother the rest of us." The child did not understand the laughter, and fancying himself ridiculed by Lord Kelwin, turned, ran and leaped like a squirrel to his shoulder, and struck him in the face.