"Because a man naturally expects a little manners, a little common politeness, from people he's taking care of, doesn't he? She's living in my house, by God!"
"That," said Jesse, quietly, "is precisely what I am getting at: since she is living in your house—if she knows it is your house—she can't be so—er—well, stupendously straight-laced, can she? And, by frozen, of course you meant straight-laced."
"I meant exactly what I said," replied Judd, sulkily. "Stop twisting my words around, will you? I said that she was ice, and that is what I meant to say. You're on a blind trail, Jesse, if that's what you're getting at. Take it from me. You're a hit with 'em, I know, and all that sort of rot. But this one is more than your match. She'll shrivel you good and plenty if you try anything on with her. At that, why can't you let her alone? There are plenty of the other kind—your kind. What's the matter, anyhow? Have all the show girls moved out of New York?"
Jesse didn't relish the slap. It was not exactly a truthful slap, moreover. Jesse had withdrawn his devotions to "show girls" several years before; since doing which he had quarried in entirely different quarters.
"Let the girl alone—that's my advice," went on Judd, seized for the moment by a flickering sense of fairness. "I don't fancy her particularly—because she's so damned haughty with me, I suppose, and looks down upon me from a mountain. But she's all right. I know that, and I'm telling it to you for your information. Better forget it. There isn't a chance on earth for you, anyhow."
Jesse didn't appear to be in the least thrown off the quest by the advice.
"Are you sure," he inquired of Judd after a short silence, "that she knows just where you figure in the Riverside Drive establishment?"
"Well, you could see for yourself that she is more than seven years of age, couldn't you?" briefly replied Judd.
"But," observed Jesse, obviously seeking to get hold of all of the threads of the situation, "she is only recently out of school, I understand, and perhaps she hasn't yet fully grasped——"
"I don't know what she has grasped, and I don't care a damn," thrust in Judd, tired of the colloquy. "She must know a good deal about the way things stand or she wouldn't treat me as if I were rubbish. I can see how I stick in her throat. When it comes to that, why shouldn't I? She's only a schoolgirl, if she is a head taller than I am. Her mother made an idiotic mistake in having the girl around the place. But that's none of my affair. I take the game as it stands. Only I advise you to stand clear. You might as well be decent for once in your life. Unless, of course," and Judd shot a glance of inquiry at Jesse, "you mean to turn respectable—it's about time—and go in for the marrying idea?"