deprecating gesture with more exaggerated deprecation.  “I understand.  But what I wanter say is that they’d be willin’ to be that ground, and lie down and let you walk over them—­so to speak, Miss Carr, so to speak—­if it would keep the hem of your gown from gettin’ soiled in the mud o’ the camp.  But it wouldn’t do for them to make a reg’lar curderoy road o’ themselves for the houl camp to trapse over, on the mere chance of your some time passin’ that way, would it now?”

“Won’t you let me offer you some refreshment, Mr. Hall?” said Christie, rising, with a slight color.  “I’m really ashamed of my forgetfulness again, but I’m afraid it’s partly your fault for entertaining me to the exclusion of yourself.  No, thank you, let me fetch it for you.”

She turned to a handsome sideboard near the door, and presently faced him again with a decanter of whiskey and a glass in her hand, and a return of the bewitching smile she had worn on entering.

“But perhaps you don’t take whiskey?” suggested the arch deceiver, with a sudden affected but pretty perplexity of eye, brow, and lips.

For the first time in his life Whiskey Dick hesitated between two forms of intoxication.  But he was still nervous and uneasy; habit triumphed, and he took the whiskey.  He, however, wiped his lips with a slight wave of his handkerchief, to support a certain easy elegance which he firmly believed relieved the act of any vulgar quality.

“Yes, ma’am,” he continued, after an exhilarated pause.  “Ez I said afore, this yer’s a matter you and me can discuss after the fashion o’ society.  My idea is that these yer boys should kinder let up on you and Miss Jessie for a while, and do a little more permiskus attention round the Ford.  There’s one or two families yer with grown-up gals ez oughter be squared; that is—­the boys mighter put in a few fancy touches among them—­kinder take ’em buggy riding—­or to church—­once in a while—­just to take the pizen outer their tongues, and make a kind o’ bluff to the parents, d’ye see?  That would sorter divert their own minds; and even if it didn’t, it would kinder get ’em accustomed agin to the old style and their own kind.  I want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in a giniral way.  I don’t say you hev the idea, but it’s kind o’ nat’ral you might be thinkin’ of it some time, and I thought I’d warn you agin it.”

“I think we understand each other too well to differ much, Mr. Hall,” said Christie, still smiling; “but what is the idea?”

The delicate compliment to their confidential relations and the slight stimulus of liquor had tremulously exalted Whiskey Dick.  Affecting to look cautiously out of the window and around the room, he ventured to draw nearer the young woman with a half-paternal, half-timid familiarity.

“It might have occurred to you,” he said, laying his handkerchief as if to veil mere vulgar contact, on Christie’s shoulder, “that it would be a good thing on your side to invite down some of your high-toned gentlemen friends from ’Frisco to visit you and escort you round.  It seems quite nat’ral like, and I don’t say it ain’t, but—­the boys wouldn’t stand for it.”