“I’d ‘a’ expected poor old Blutch to do as much for me.”

“He would!  He would!  Many’s the pal he buried.”

“I hate, Annie, like anything to see you actin’ up like this.  You ain’t fit to walk out of this hotel on your own hook.  Where’d you get that hand-me-down?”

She looked down at herself, quickly reddening.

“It’s a warm suit, Joe.”

“Why, you ’ain’t got a chance!  A little thing like you ain’t cut out for but one or two things.  Coddlin’—­that’s your line.  The minute you’re nobody’s doll you’re goin’ to get stepped on and get busted.”

“Whatta you know about—­”

“What kind of a job you think you’re gonna get?  Adviser to a corporation lawyer?  You’re too soft, girl.  What chance you think you got buckin’ up against a town that wants value received from a woman.  Aw, you know what I mean, Annie.  You can’t pull that baby stuff all the time.”

“You,” she cried, beating her small hands together, “oh, you—­you—­” and then sat down, crying weakly.  “Them days back there!  Why, I—­I was such a kid it’s just like they hadn’t been!  With her and my grandmother dead and gone these twelve years, if it wasn’t for you it’s—­it’s like they’d never been.”

“Nobody was gladder ’n me, girl, to see how you made a bed for yourself.  I’m commendin’ you, I am.  That’s just what I’m tryin’ to tell you now, girl.  You was cut out to be somebody’s kitten, and—­”

“O God!” she sobbed into her handkerchief, “why didn’t you take me when you took him?”

“Now, now, Annie, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.  A good-lookin’ woman like you ’ain’t got nothing to worry about.  Lemme order you up a drink.  You’re gettin’ weak again.”

“No, no; I’m taking ’em too often.  But they warm me.  They warm me, and I’m cold, Joe—­cold.”

“Then lemme—­”

“No!  No!”

He put out a short, broad hand toward her.

“Poor little—­”

“I gotta go now, Joe.  These rooms ain’t mine no more.”

He barred her path.

“Go where?”

‘"Ain’t I told you?  I’m going out.  Anybody that’s willin’ to work can get it in this town.  I ain’t the softy you think I am.”

He took her small black purse up from the table.

“What’s your capital?”

“You—­quit!”

“Ten—­’leven—­fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents.”

“You gimme!”

“You can’t cut no capers on that, girl.”

“I—­can work.”

He dropped something in against the coins.

It clinked.

She sprang at him.

“No, no; not a cent from you—­for myself.  I—­I didn’t know you in them days for nothing.  I was only a kid, but I—­I know you!  I know.  You gimme!  Gimme!”

He withheld it from her.

“Hold your horses, beauty!  What I was then I am now, and I ain’t ashamed of it.  Human, that’s all.  The best of us is only human before a pretty woman.”