"Well, little ole N'Yawk ain't done you no hurt as I kin see. Reckon I'll have to winter theah a spell mahself when mah caows come home," he said enthusiastically. "Yuah lookin' purtier 'n a red heifer."
Douglass grinned at her rosy confusion. "You've got a good eye for color, Red. But you ought to cultivate the virtue of forbearance, ought he not, Mrs. Brevoort?" But she scornfully ignored him and was rather profuse in her protestations to Red of her happiness at being back in "God's country" again.
At the dinner table that night Douglass maliciously reverted to the topic of forbearance. Turning to McVey he assumed a becoming gravity which the twinkle in his eyes belied.
"Say, old-timer, Mrs. Brevoort is skeptical of we poor cowpunchers' virtue; she thinks we have no power of forbearance. Can't you help me to convince her that we often keep from doing wicked things just for the pure love of being good."
Red, catching the mischievous note in his question, rose to the occasion manfully.
"Why, yuh ain't thinkin' that bad of us, are yuh?" he said with sorrowful reproach to Constance. "Indeed, ma'am, we are real gentle by spells. Why, I mind las' yeah when I was ridin' fences foh thu C Bar I got to thinkin' haow foolish it were o' me to keep hankerin' after thu delusions o' thu Alcazah, an' to keep wantin' to go oveh theah simultaneous an' waste my hawd eahned money on thu see-ductions o' thu flowin' bowl. So I braces up, an' says to thu devil o' temptation, kinda contemptuous-like, 'Hit thu back trail, Satan!'
"Every time I feels thu iniquity o' thust comin' on me I jes' swaps the price o' a drink from my sack to a leetle ole terbacca bag I totes especial foh thet puppos, and goes an' dips my beak in healthy alkali wateh like a sensibul, fohbeahing Christian should. It were two bits every time an' by thu time Chris'mas comes raound thu smoke bag were plumb full. I suttinly fohboah a heap thet summah."
Genuinely interested at the simple relation, Constance asked sympathetically: "And what did you do with the money so heroically saved, may I ask?"
"Well, I had thu price O' nine bottles o' booze in thu bag when I counted her oveh at Tin Cup on Chrismus eve. Theah's five bottles goes to a gallon, yuh know, so I rattles thu bones with thu perfessor an' o' cose I wins thu odd bottle. Then I blows six bits fer a two-gallon jug an'—"
Constance glared at him severely. Douglass laid his head on the table and cried.