“What the devil are they talking about anyway?” muttered Rance to himself as he stole a glance at them over his shoulder, though he kept on shuffling the cards.
“I met you on the road to Monterey,” said Johnson with a smile.
“Yes, comin’ an’ goin’,” smiled back the Girl. “You passed me a bunch o’ wild syringa over the wheel; you also asked me to go a-berryin’—” and here she paused long enough to glance up at him coquettishly before adding: “But I didn’t see it Mr. Johnson.”
“I noticed that,” observed Johnson, laughing.
“An’ when you went away you said—” The Girl broke off abruptly and replaced the candle on the bar; then with a shy, embarrassed look on her face she ended with: “Oh, I dunno.”
“Yes, you do, yes, you do,” maintained Johnson. “I said I’ll think of you all the time—well, I’ve thought of you ever since.”
There was a moment of embarrassment. Then:
“Somehow I kind o’ tho’t you might drop in,” she said with averted eyes. “But as you didn’t—” She paused and summoned to her face a look which she believed would adequately reflect a knowledge of the proprieties. “O’ course,” she tittered out, “it wa’n’t my place to remember you—first.”
“But I didn’t know where you lived—you never told me, you know,” contended the road agent, which contention so satisfied the Girl—for she remembered only too well that she had not told him—that she determined to show him further evidences of her regard.
“Say, I got a special bottle here—best in the house. Will you...?”