“Now you’re just the kind of a man I like,” she whispered. “But what are you going to do after you’re married?”
“I don’t think I will marry,” he said; “at least I’ll not marry the girl I intended. You and I are going to talk that over, because——”
“Why, I’ve only known you about two hours.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference if you’d only known me two minutes, it would be just the same.”
“I suppose so, but you see a good many men have talked to me like that, and promised me everything, but it’s always the same in the end. Men say things that they mean at the time, but it doesn’t last.”
He was really in earnest, though he was drunk, and the next afternoon, when he was sober enough to know what he was doing, he wrote a note to his fiancee, telling her that he was sorry, but it was all off. There were reasons, of course, but he couldn’t explain, and would she kindly release him from his engagement, which had been entered into too hastily, etc., etc. You know the old story.
In the end he got his freedom in a tear-stained letter, then he went and threw a high-ball under his belt and squared away for the pudding girl.
She was making about $40 a week and living at the rate of about $150, it didn’t take a wise man to see that, and so he was on the moment he looked over the ranch. But it cut no figure with him at all, for he was too well satisfied to be bothered about a trifle like that, especially at the start of the hunt, so he took things as they came and made the best of them.
One night he was there, and they had become confidential.
“Who did it all?” he asked, as he waved his hand to take in the elaborate furnishings of the room.