Pretty soon, I says, “Macie, I bought somethin’ fer you a while back.” (I felt in my vest pocket.) “Here it is. Will you look at it?”
She looked. And her pretty face got all smiles and blushes, and her eyes tearful. “Alec!” she whispered. “Aint it beautiful!” And she reached out her left hand t’ me.
I took it in both of mine–clost, fer a second. Then I sorted out that slim third finger of hern,–and slipped on my little brandin’-iron.
CHAPTER TEN
MACIE AND THE OP’RA GAME
The street Mace lived on was turrible narra. Why, if a long-horn had ’a’ been druv through it, he could ’a’ just give a wiggle of his haid and busted all the windas in the block. And her house! It was nigh as dark as the inside of a cow, and I judged they was a last-year’s cabbage a-wanderin’ ’round somewheres. Wal, never mind. Two shakes of a lamb’s tail, and I’d clumb about a hunderd steps and–
“How are y’, little gal?”
“Alive and kickin’, Alec.”
She ast me in. A kinda ole lady was over to one side, cookin’. At a table was two gents, the one young, with a complexion like the bottom-side of a watermelon; the other about fifty, with a long coat, a vest all over coffee, and no more chin’n a gopher.
“Mrs. Whipple,” says Macie, “Mister Lloyd.”