"Like him? Of course I like him, and"--there was asperity in Essie's tone now--"he isn't a loafer." "Hold-up, then," substituted Dubois. "Nor a hold-up." "What you t'ink he is?" "Something you would never recognize," she answered sharply; "a gentleman." Van Lennop smiled, for in his mind's eye he could see the tense aggressiveness of her slim figure. "Chentleman!" was the contemptuous snort. "Chentleman--and never buy de drinks for nobody all de time he is in Crowheart. Fine chentleman dat!" "When do you buy any?" was the pointed inquiry. "I haf to work for _my_ money; his comes easy," he replied significantly. "You said that before." The voice was growing shriller. "How do you know?" "Robbin's easy." "I must believe it if _you say_ so." "Why you get mad? Why you stick up for him so hard?" persisted the Frenchman stubbornly. "Why wouldn't I stick up for him? He's a friend of mine." "Fine fren--dat lazy cheap-skate!" There was real venom in the voice. Van Lennop heard the stamp of Essie Tisdale's small foot upon the hard-trodden dooryard. "You needn't think you'll advance your own interests by calling him such names as that! Let me tell you I wouldn't marry you if you asked me a million, million times!" Van Lennop started. So he was asking Essie Tisdale to marry him--this old Edouard Dubois with the bullet-shaped head and the brutal face that Van Lennop had found so objectionable upon each occasion that he had been his vis-a-vis in the dining-room? "Oh, you wouldn't marry me?"--the guttural voice was ugly now--"I offer you good home, good clothes, ze chance to travel when you lak and hear ze good music zat you love and you wouldn't marry me if I ask you million times? Maybe some time, Mees Teesdale, you be _glad_ to marry me when I ask you once!" "Maybe I will," the angry young voice flung back, "but that time hasn't come _yet_, Mr. Dubois!" "And God forbid that it ever should," breathed Van Lennop to himself at the window above. His eyes had grown a little moist at this exhibition of her loyalty and somehow the genuineness of it made him glow, the more perhaps that he was never without a lurking suspicion of the disinterestedness of women's friendship for the reasons which Dr. Harpe, for instance, knew.