“Ah,” she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her quite pretty. “Ah—he ez older—your Doctor Sparrlow—but YOU are strong, M'sieu.”
“And,” said Kane vaguely, “he will tell you what to do.”
“Ah,” she repeated again softly, with the same smile, “he will tell me what to do if I shall not know myself. Dat ez good.”
Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless white paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty fashion dear to druggists' clerks. As he handed it to her she felt in her pocket and produced a handful of gold.
“What shall I pay for zees, M'sieu?”
Kane reddened a little—solely because of his slow arithmetical faculties. Adhesive plaster was cheap—he would like to have charged proportionately for the exact amount he had used; but the division was beyond him! And he lacked the trader's instinct.
“Twenty-five cents, I think,” he hazarded briefly.
She started, but smiled again. “Twenty-five cents for all zees—ze medicine, ze strips for ze head, ze hair cut”—she glanced at the paper parcel he had given her—“it is only twenty-five cents?”
“That's all.”
He selected from her outstretched palm, with some difficulty, the exact amount, the smallest coin it held. She again looked at him curiously—half confusedly—and moved slowly into the shop. The miner, who was still there, retreated as before with a gaspingly apologetic gesture—even flattening himself against the window to give her sweeping silk flounces freer passage. As she passed into the street with a “Merci, M'sieu, good a'night,” and the hackman started from the vehicle to receive her, the miner drew a long breath, and bringing his fist down upon the counter, ejaculated,—