"I will tell Lallah that you consent. Be ready, both, please, when you hear the chapel bell," directed the minister, going to the mission.
Scarlett lingered, but as Evelyn took no notice of him, "Thankee for the pressing invitation," he remarked, drawing up a chair and seating himself beside her. "And are ye beginning to feel acclimated among us savages?"
"Oh, you are doing your best!" Evelyn assured him. "Though I must say, even for the wilderness, the ideas of social distinction seem curiously lax. Why, as his head waiter is off on a spree, Mr. Hastie has offered me the place—three hundred dollars a month and tips!"
"Good pay," commented Scarlett. "Why don't ye take it? I'd ask no better for my own sister, if I had one."
Evelyn tossed her head. "To pass dishes to unwashed barbarians in corduroys who gobble off their knives and drink from their saucers. Even for your own sister," she could not forbear asking, "wouldn't you consider the situation rather primitive?"
"I should, and that's the situation's saving grace," he promptly replied, "since primitive man is woman's best friend, once she makes him realize she will not let him be her enemy."
Against her will, Evelyn looked at the speaker with reluctant admiration, forced to recognize that however ignorant of class distinctions the poor young man might be, his was certainly no ordinary mentality. Accordingly, woman-like, she harked back to personalities, hoping in shallow waters to take him, through his very superiority, at a disadvantage. "Oh, we have nothing to complain of on the score of friendliness," she laughed. "Our matrimonial opportunities seem limited only by the number of single men within proposing radius. No, Sergeant, I am not the belle. That proud position is disputed by Sarah and the plainest orphan, who also is the most muscular, because they frankly tell us, in a land where hired labor is not to be had a man must marry to get some one to cook and wash for him. However, such few score of proposals as have come my way, I honestly can brag, are for myself, since I am not considered a specially useful 'household proposition,' and oddly enough my great wealth seems not to impress these poverty-stricken millionaires in the least degree."
"Oh, I tell ye, in a mining camp one gets down to first principles, or lack of them," commented the soldier. "It's chaos, till man and woman together evolve a paradise."
Evelyn waited, hoping he also would propose to her in order that she might refuse him, not kindly, with the consideration she had shown the other poor victims who had laid their hearts at her feet, but with scathing denunciation of his insolence. Instead of improving his opportunity, however, the soldier rose. "Ye'll bid me to the wedding, Miss Durant?"
"In what capacity—officially, or as a guest?"