"I wouldn't ever have known it," said Hanson truthfully. "The fact is I'm not noticing anything much, Mrs. Gallito, I got a lot on my mind." He sighed unfeignedly and she noticed that he looked both tired and worried. "And say, I wish you'd sit down and talk to me a little."
She still stood looking at him hesitatingly, a distressed expression on her face. "I—I don't know as I'd better," she faltered. "Gallito, he said, the very last thing he said, was that if you come around—Oh, Mr. Hanson," she sat down weakly in her chair and began to cry. "I thought you was just about the nicest man I'd met for many a day, and here I find you're a dreadful scamp. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I guess all men are alike!"
Hanson bent forward earnestly. He had an end to gain and he meant to gain it. "Now look here, Mrs. Gallito," he said. "You don't want to condemn me unheard. You're not that kind of a lady. I knew that the first minute I set eyes on you. Now understand I'm not trying to persuade you that I'm any better than I am, but I just want you to believe that I'm not quite so black as I'm painted, not as black as your husband and Bob Flick want to paint me, anyway."
She twisted a fold of her dress, already half-persuaded and yet still a little doubtful. "But you never gave us a hint that you were married," she ventured timidly.
"Honest to God, I forget it myself," he asserted devoutly. "How can a man be always thinking to tell everyone he meets that he's still in a legal tie-up, when the only way he can remember it himself is by coming across his marriage certificate, now and then? Why, it's a good ten years since me and that woman parted. You don't call that married?"
His positive personality exerted its usual influence over Mrs. Gallito. "'Course not," she agreed, although she still sat with downcast eyes and pleated her dress.
"I'm a pretty lonely man," pathos in his voice, "and I'd kind of gotten into the way of putting home and happiness and all like that away from me; and then I came here and saw Pearl," he was sincere enough now, "and honest, Mrs. Gallito, it was all up with me then, right from the first minute, and I was so plumb crazy about her that I guess I lost my head. I knew all the time that I ought to tell you and her just how I was fixed, I knew it, but, someways, try as I would, I couldn't. I didn't have the nerve, so I just waited and let the cards fall as they would. Maybe I was a fool and a coward. The way things have turned out, it sure looks like I was, but I just couldn't help it."
"I guess you ain't any different from most men," she answered, weakly sympathetic, "but you see Pearl has her notions, and they're mighty strong ones. It's the way she's been brought up," this with some pride. "You see, me and her pop started out with the idea that we wasn't going to have the Pearl live one of those hand to mouth lives that we'd seen girls in the circus that didn't have much training or much ability live. We saw right from the first that she was awful smart and awful pretty, and her Pop he had the knack of making money and holding on to it. Well, when he saw that she had her head set on the stage and we couldn't keep her off it, it's in her blood, you see, why her Pop says: 'Well, there's one thing, till she's of age, legal, on or off the stage, she's going to have a mother's care and a father showing up every now and then unexpected.' He's got awful Spanish ideas, you know. 'I don't want her kept innocent,' he says. 'My Lord, no. It's the innocent ones that have got to pay, and pay big in a world of bad knowledge where ignorance is not forgave and is punished worse than any crime. Let her see the seamy side,' he says, 'she's no fool. Let her see what those who thinks to live easy and gives themselves away easy gets.'
"And Pearl saw right off. You see, she ain't so soft-hearted like me," again she wiped the furtive tear from her eye. "Pearl's hard. She ain't no conscience about some things. She'll lead a man on and on, when she don't care beans for him, and take all he'll give her, not money, you know, but awful handsome presents. I've seen her let some poor boy that was crazy about her blow in all the dust that he'd saved for a year. Oh, yes, she's like her father in more'n one way, both awful ambitious and terrible fond of making money. Why," she added naïvely, "I've seen Pearl look at a bank note like I never saw her look at a love letter."
"Well, she won't make much money up in those mountains, not dancing, anyway," he laughed briefly and unmirthfully.