"Girls do run a man so hard, nowadays," observed Billy, pathetically.
"It was different in your youth, no doubt. But I am not a girl, and quite old enough to box the ears of conceited urchins."
"Do!--if you'll let me give you a kiss for a blow."
"What precocious Christianity! You had better apply to that pretty American girl near the Casino door."
"Miss Mamie Mulrady? Oh, I can get her kisses without fightin'. Not bad-lookin', is she? Lots of tin, an' as spry as they make 'em. There's th' little mother an' that rotter chippin' into th' Casino. Shall we follow, Lady Jim?"
They were stopped on the steps by Miss Mulrady, "who knew both, and claimed acquaintance through a wholly unnecessary lorgnette. She was a vivacious Wild West product, who exaggerated the vernacular, because Europeans expected to find the Californian girl of fiction in real life. Her exaggerated slang was assumed out of sheer amusement, and she greatly enjoyed the amazed looks of those who heard her talk good Anglo-Saxon, which she did, when she escaped from fools to forgather with wise men.
"How are you, Miss Mulrady?" asked Billy solemnly.
"Keepin' afloat, I guess, but that's about all. The dollars I've lost buckin' the tiger would have bought me a dozen husbands."
"Foreign ones are cheap, I believe," said Leah, admiring the prairie-flower's Paris frock more than her republican manner.
"You make me smile. I'm goin' to run tandem with Sir Billy here--me first and he the wheeler."