“Yes?” questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on her tongue.  “Go on.”

“Er—­er, don’t we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before?  Don’t they behave more decent and orderly?  Don’t they get civilization just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?”

“And—­and booze?  Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the Millings National Bank—­he never used to patronize The Aura.  And now he’s there every night till twelve and often later, for he won’t obey me any more.  I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting a better type of customer!  Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street the other day—­that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me.  Before now she’s cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as Dickie does—­”

“Dickie cut you?” Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and with a strained note of alarm.  “That’s a good one, Miss Sheila.  I kinder fancied you did the cuttin’ there.”

“Dickie hasn’t spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it.”

“Yes’m.  He came to me first,” drawled Sylvester.

They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence.  He had burst in upon his family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him.

“Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?”

Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by Dickie’s thin hand that shot out at him like a sword.

“Sure it’s true,” Sylvester had said coolly.  But he had not felt cool.  He had felt shaken and confused.  The boy’s entire self-forgetfulness, his entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a stranger, a not inconsiderable one.

“It’s true, then.”  Dickie had drawn a big breath.  “You—­you”—­he seemed to swallow an epithet—­“you’ll let that girl go into your filthy saloon and make money for you by her—­by her prettiness and her—­her ignorance—­”

“Say, Dickie,” his father had drawled, “you goin’ to run for the legislature?  Such a lot of classy words!” But anger and alarm were rising in him.

“You’ve fetched her away out here,” went on Dickie, “and kinder got her cornered and you’ve talked a lot of slush to her and you’ve—­”

Here Girlie came to the rescue.

“Well, anyway, she’s a willing victim, Dickie,” Girlie had said.

Dickie had flashed her one look.  “Is she?  I’ll see about that.  Where’s Sheila?”

And then, there was Sheila’s memory.  Dickie had come upon her in a confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures scattered over the chairs and floor.  Sheila had lifted to him from where she knelt a glowing and excited face.  “Oh, Dickie,” she had said, her relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, “have you heard?”