Below had been added—apparently with a burnt match
“ESPESHUALLY THE SISTER-IN-LAW.”
Jinnie watched their faces as they read; and when, at the last line, they both laughed, she pulled at Hilda’s skirt, squealing.
“Tell me! Tell me!”
“All right—be still and listen,” said Hilda, and began to read the poster slowly to the child.
“It says kids! Can I go? Can I go?” Jinnie hopped up and down in her usual excited fashion.
“No—none of us will get to go,” said Hilda, a bit disconsolately. “Maybelle, do you suppose, maybe, your father—?”
But when she turned toward where Maybelle had stood, she found that her companion had dropped back to the doorway and seemed to be speaking to a man there. Hilda had noticed him when they first went in, standing far at the back of the store. All through her little talk with Lefty Adams, she was vaguely aware that this person watched them with the air of wishing not to seem to do so. He was no cowboy, Hilda knew, from the way he was dressed; yet he was not an eastern man—a tenderfoot. He belonged to the West; and she had too little experience of its small towns to recognize the type, to guess that this was, as Lefty would have described him, “A tin-horn gambler.”
Almost at the instant that Hilda turned, Maybelle sent an uneasy glance over her shoulder; then—for all the world as though she did it on purpose—she dropped her box of candy; the lid flew off, and the marshmallows scattered all about. Instantly the man lifted his hat with an air of exaggerated politeness and said in a good loud voice,
“Allow me, Miss.”