with Wilbur dropping in now and then so him and Nettie could look at his photo, which was propped up against a book on the centre table—­one of them large three-dollar books that you get stuck with by an agent and never read—­and Nettie dropping into his store now and then to hear him practise over difficult bits from his piece that he was going to render at the musical entertainment for the Belgians, with him asking her if she thought he shaded the staccato passage a mite too heavy, or some guff like that.

“So here come the concert, with every seat sold and the hall draped pretty with flags and cut flowers.  Some of the boys was down from the ranch, and you bet I made ’em all come across for tickets, and old Safety First—­Chet’s father—­I stuck him for a dollar one, though he had an evil look in his eyes.  That’s how the boys got so crazy about this here song.  They brought that record back with ’em.  And Buck Devine, that I met on the street that very day of the concert, he give me another kind of a little jolt.  He’d been gossiping round town, the vicious way men do, and he says to me: 

“’That Chester lad is taking awful chances for a man that needs his two hands at his work.  Of course if he was a foot-racer or something like that, where he didn’t need hands—­’ ‘What’s all this?’ I asks.  ‘Why,’ says Buck, ’he’s had his nails rasped down to the quick till he almost screams if they touch anything, and he goes back for more every single day.  It’s a wonder they ain’t mortified on him already; and say, it costs him six bits a throw and, of course, he don’t take no change from a dollar—­he leaves the extra two bits for a tip.  Gee!  A dollar a day for keeping your nails tuned up—­and I ain’t sure he don’t have ’em done twice on Sundays.  Mine ain’t never had a file teched to ’em yet,’ he says.  ‘I see that,’ I says.  ’If any foul-minded person ever accuses you of it, you got abundant proofs of your innocence right there with you.  As for Chester,’ I says, ‘he has an object.’  ‘He has,’ says Buck.  ’Not what you think,’ I says.  ‘Very different from that.  It’s true,’ I concedes, ’that he ought to take that money and go to some good osteopath and have his head treated, but he’s all right at that.  Don’t you set up nights worrying about it.’  And I sent Buck slinking off shamefaced but unconvinced, I could see.  But I wasn’t a bit scared.

“Chet et supper with us the night of the concert and took Nettie and I to the hall, and you bet I wedged them two close in next each other when we got to our seats.  This was my star play.  If they didn’t fall for each other now—­Shucks!  They had to.  And I noticed they was more confidential already, with Nettie looking at him sometimes almost respectfully.