Her strange, troubled face brightened a little.
"Then, ef ye'r' my friend," she quickly said, "go an' tell 'im at I wush he'd please kem home."
The man laughed, looked at her quizzically for a time, and then in a tone, half of vexation and half of amusement, said:
"Well, if you aren't the dangedest curiosity I ever saw! You ought to travel with Barnum."
He gazed at her intently from head to foot, his face softening.
"You've no business trotting around loose in these suburbs," he muttered, more to himself than to her, then quite solus he added: "She's cracked: she's an idiot."
Her vague troubled look now appealed to the other side of the man's nature. "Do you know where you are? This is no place for you; where do you live?" He put his inquiries in a voice so different from that half-wheedling, half brutal one hitherto used, that she instantly looked up with a gleam of trust in her eyes.
"Where is your home?" he continued.
"Over to the tother side o' the mounting, at Mr. White's," she frankly answered.
"Well, what are you doing down here among these saloons and dives? Why don't you go home and stay with your mother? This is a bad place for you."