"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him. "I’m covered all right, and strong. You’re missing the number, that’s all. I’m going to camp here, and when I see her, I’ll clout her on the kurb; I’ll slam a rod to her nut, if I croak for it!" "Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you’ve certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell’s this woman you’re talking about?" "As if you don’t know! What do you want to string me for?" Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face. "All right, have it your way." "Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don’t know and just to prove to you that I _do_ know, it’s the sister of that young Koerner!" Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt. Then he said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity: "You’ve passed; the nut college for you." Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak--the silence oppressed her: "Well, I’ll stay and see, anyway." "Jane, you’re bug house," said Gibbs quietly. Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing. "Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that’s what I’ve been leery of. I haven’t slept for a month; I’ve laid awake night after night; for four days now I’ve been going down the line--hunting her everywhere, and I can’t find her!" She gave way utterly and cried. And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes, though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision. But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it. "Dan," she said, looking up, "you don’t know what I’ve done for that man. I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing well--copping the cush right along. I was working under protection in Chi.; I gave it all up for him--" She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly: "The tommy buster!" Gibbs started. "No," he protested, "not Curly!" "Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt. "What made you stand for it?" "Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once. I had rousted a goose for his poke--all alone too--" She spoke with the pride she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up. "What’s the matter?" she demanded suddenly.