"I am fully—that," admitted the stranger.
"And a rotter!" said Jaffrey Bretton.
"Oh, no end of a rotter!" conceded the stranger.
"And if I am not very much mistaken," mused Jaffrey Bretton, "you are also the same man whom I noted—yesterday afternoon at the flower booth in the railroad station—staring so unconscionably— not to say offensively hard at my daughter?"
"I deny nothing!" hiccoughed the stranger. With an emotion that would have done credit to a sober sorrow he lifted his stricken face to his accuser. "And I don't mind at all that I'm drunk," he confided. "Nor—nor yet being the man who stared so—so hard at your daughter. But—but why am I such a rotter? Frankly now as man to man how could I be such a rotter? That nice—nice little girl! That——" With uncontrollable remorse he buried his face in his hands again.
"There are never but two reasons why a man pursues a woman," 72 observed Bretton, "One because he respects her, and the other because he doesn't. My daughter has, of course, been a little unfortunate lately in achieving a certain amount of cheap newspaper notoriety." In a perfectly even line of interrogation his fine eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. "There was a woman back there at the railroad station," he confided, as though in sheer impulsiveness, "who rated my daughter indeed as being 'fast looking'. Now just about how 'fast looking' would you consider her?"
From behind the cage of his fingers the young man's lips emitted a most unhappy little groan.
"Why—why I should consider her," he mumbled, "just—just about as 'fast looking' as a new-born babe!" But his rowdy eyes, raking the older man's face, gathered no answering smile to their humor. "N—n—o?" he rallied desperately. "N—o? On—on further consideration I should say that that she wasn't half as fast looking as a newborn babe! What? Eh?" he questioned 73 worriedly. "Well not a hundredth part, then? Not a thousandth? Not a—not a billionth? Oh, upon my soul," he sweated, "I can't think what comes higher than billions!
"A 'billion' is plenty high enough," said Jaffrey Bretton. "But such being the case—why did you do it?"
"Why did I do it?" mumbled the stranger.