With a start Nattie looked up, expecting a complaint, an occurrence often prefaced by some like question, and scrutinizing him more particularly, saw a short, rather stout young man, possessing an air of cheap assurance, hair that insisted on being red, notwithstanding the bear's grease that covered it, teeth all at variance with each other, and seeming to rejoice obtrusively in the fact, and light blue eyes of a most insinuating expression, trimmed around with red.
"Yes," Nattie replied as she took this survey. "I am."
"You don't know me, I suppose?" was the next question.
"No," Nattie replied with a glance at the large mock diamond pin, and immense imitation amethyst ring he wore; "I certainly do not."
"I think you are mistaken about that," he rejoined, smiling at her in a most unpleasantly familiar manner.
Surprised and offended, Nattie drew back haughtily. "I think, rather, you are mistaken," she said, stiffly. "May I inquire your business?"
With an air of easy confidence and familiar remonstrance, he replied,
"Come, now, don't freeze a fellow; why, I came to see you. That's my business and no other!"
"He is drunk," thought Nattie, indignantly, but before she could reply he added,
"I am an operator, you see."