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Page 13
"No," said Rylands, "but that lady, your old friend, Miss Clifford,
does, and I thought you might be hankering after it."
"How do you know Tinkie Clifford smokes?" said Mrs. Rylands quickly.
"She lit a cigaretty that day she called."
"I hate it," said Mrs. Rylands shortly.
Mr. Rylands nodded approval, and puffed meditatively.
"Josh, have you seen that girl since?"
"No," said Joshua.
"Nor any other girl like her?"
"No," said Joshua wonderingly. "You see I only got to know her on
your account, Ellen, that she might see you."
"Well, don't you do it any more! None of 'em! Promise me!" She
leaned forward eagerly in her chair.
"But Ellen,"--her husband began gravely.
"I know what you're going to say, but they can't do me any good,
and you can't do them any good as you did ME, so there!"
Mr. Rylands was silent, and smiled meditatively.
"Josh!"
"Yes."
"When you met me that night on the Sacramento boat, and looked at
me, did you--did I," she hesitated,--"did you look at me because I
had been crying?"
"I thought you were troubled in spirit, and looked so."
"I suppose I looked worried, of course; I had no time to change or
even fix my hair; I had on that green dress, and it NEVER was
becoming. And you only spoke to me on account of my awful looks?"
"I saw only your wrestling soul, Ellen, and I thought you needed
comfort and help."
She was silent for a moment, and then, leaning forward, picked up
the poker and began to thrust it absently between the bars.
"And if it had been some other girl crying and looking awful, you'd
have spoken to her all the same?"
This was a new idea to Mr. Rylands, but with most men logic is
supreme. "I suppose I would," he said slowly.
"And married her?" She rattled the bars of the grate with the
poker as if to drown the inevitable reply.
Mr. Rylands loved the woman before him, but it pleased him to think
that he loved truth better. "If it had been necessary to her
salvation, yes," he said.
"Not Tinkie?" she said suddenly.
"SHE never would have been in your contrite condition."
"Much you know! Girls like that can cry as well as laugh, just as
they want to. Well! I suppose I DID look horrid." Nevertheless,
she seemed to gain some gratification from her husband's reply, and
changed the subject as if fearful of losing that satisfaction by
further questioning.
"I tried some of those songs you brought, but I don't think they go
well with the harmonium," she said, pointing to some music on its
rack, "except one. Just listen." She rose, and with the same
nervous quickness she had shown before, went to the instrument and
began to sing and play. There was a hopeless incongruity between
the character of the instrument and the spirit of the song. Mrs.
Rylands's voice was rather forced and crudely trained, but Joshua
Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered by the fire and
conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt it good.
Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair
performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine
fringes of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his
hand nearest her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys,
or her eyes from the music, said tentatively:--
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