"Sadie!" Mrs. Thomas drew forth her handkerchief and prepared to shed the ready tear. "How you can have the heart to talk so to a woman that ain't buried her husband twelve months! Mr. José ain't even thought of takin' the liberties you sit there accusin' him of. If I had a live husband to pertect me, you wouldn't dare treat me like what you do. Whenever you miss a shot, or get fooled on a prospect, or get some money won away from you, you come back to our little cabin an' sit lookin' at me like you was a wolf an' talkin' like you was a she-bear. And—and it's darned hard, that's what it is."
"If you were a man, Nitschkan," José drew himself up truculently, "you would indeed answer for such speeches, and you would not have converted me so easily, either. I have no fear of men." This was quite true, he had not, but his eye quailed and drooped before the steady gaze of Mrs. Nitschkan.
"Come, come," said Gallito peremptorily, "I am glad to see you all each evening about my fireside, but I will have no arguing nor quarreling, understand that. A man's house is his castle."
José diplomatically dropped the subject, which did not mean that he had abandoned his plan for one moment. He merely waited a more convenient season. His strongest arguments were that it was not an infrequent occurrence for Gallito to entertain guests of his own nationality in his mountain cabin. "And my hair!" cried José pathetically. "It would be a crown of glory to Nitschkan if she had it; but it is a shame to me, a man, to have to wear it so long. No one in the camp could possibly know that I have ears."
Gallito at first absolutely refused to listen to him, but so adroitly did José bring up the subject every evening that he began to make some impression on his stern jailer. He was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito's normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which José invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac. Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince José of the wild folly of his desire.
Their debate continued for several evenings and finally ended, as José meant it should, in Gallito giving a reluctant consent, under certain conditions which he insisted should be rigidly carried out.
He admitted that it was unlikely that any suspicion would be aroused in the village. Those who saw the party enter the hall would, if they thought about the matter at all, take it for granted that the stranger was some friend of Bob Flick's who had come up with him on the train. But two conditions Gallito insisted upon: the first, that José was to turn the collar of his heavy overcoat high up about his face and draw his hat low over his brows, and the second was that he was only to be permitted to observe the dancing from behind the curtain of the little recess at the end of the hall which served Pearl as a dressing room. He might gaze his fill through the peep-hole there, but under no circumstances was he to be seen in the body of the hall. But these conditions, as Gallito pointed out, were entirely dependent on Pearl. It was a question whether she would tolerate José for a whole evening in her dressing room.
At first she flatly refused to do so and turned a persistently deaf ear to José's pleading. She had to slip out of one frock and into another at least three times. There would not be room with José sitting there.
"But, dear Señorita, I will not be sitting there," he cried. "When the moment comes that you change your frock I will be standing with my face to the wall and my eyes covered with my hands."
"I should hope so," murmured Mrs. Thomas, who was present.