But I took that girl down to New York twice with me and showed her how and what to buy there, instead of going to Spokane for her styles, and to-day she’s got a thriving little business with a bully sign that we copied from them in the East —­“Madame Elizabeth, Robes et Manteaux.”  Yes, sir; New York has at least one real reason for taking up room.  That’s a thing I always try to get into Ben Sutton’s head, that he’d ought to buy his clothes down there instead of getting ’em from a reckless devil-dare of a tailor up in Seattle that will do anything in the world Ben tells him to—­and he tells him a plenty, believe me.  He won’t ever wear a dress suit, either, because he says that costume makes all men look alike and he ain’t going to stifle his individuality.  If you seen Ben’s figure once you’d know that nothing could make him look like any one else, him being built on the lines of a grain elevator and having individuality no clothes on earth could stifle.  He’s the very last man on earth that should have coloured braid on his check suits.  However!

My trunk is packed in a hurry and I’m down to the 6:10 on time.  Lon is very scared and jubilant over deserting Henrietta in this furtive way, and Ben is all ebullient in a new suit that looks like a lodge regalia and Jeff Tuttle in plain clothes is as happy as a child.  When I get there he’s already begun to give his imitation of a Sioux squaw with a hare lip reciting “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night” in her native language, which he pulls on all occasions when he’s feeling too good.  It’s some imitation.  The Sioux language, even when spoken by a trained elocutionist, can’t be anything dulcet.  Jeff’s stunt makes it sound like grinding coffee and shovelling coal into a cellar at the same time.  Anyway, our journey begun happily and proved to be a good one, the days passing pleasantly while we talked over old times and played ten-cent limit in my stateroom, though Jeff Tuttle is so untravelled that he’ll actually complain about the food and service in a dining-car.  The poor puzzled old cow-man still thinks you ought to get a good meal in one, like the pretty bill of fare says you can.

Then one morning we was in New York and Ben Sutton got his first shock.  He believed he was still on the other side of the river because he hadn’t rid in a ferryboat yet.  He had to be told sharply by parties in uniform.  But we got him safe to a nice tall hotel on Broadway at last.  Talk about your hicks from the brush—­Ben was it, coming back to this here birthplace of his.  He fell into a daze on the short ride to the hotel—­after insisting hotly that we should go to one that was pulled down ten years ago—­and he never did get out of it all that day.

Lon and Jeff was dazed, too.  The city filled ’em with awe and they made no pretense to the contrary.  About all they did that day was to buy picture cards and a few drinks.  They was afraid to wander very far from the hotel for fear they’d get run over or arrested or fall into the new subway or something calamitous like that.  Of course New York was looking as usual, the streets being full of tired voters tearing up the car-tracks and digging first-line trenches and so forth.