“No wonder you love him,” she declared, and added artlessly: “His wife must simply adore him.”
“'He has no wife to bother his fife, so he paddles his own canoe,'” Billy recited. “I don't believe the old sour-dough has ever been in love with anything more charming than the goddess of fortune. He's womanproof.”
“About Mrs. Jenks,” Dolores continued, abruptly changing the subject. “How nice to reflect that after she had trusted you and believed in you when you were penniless, you were enabled to justify her faith.”
“You bet!” Billy declared. “I feel that I can never possibly hope to catch even with the old Samaritan, although I did try to show her how much I appreciated her.”
“I dare say you went right out and bought her an impossible hat,” Dolores challenged roguishly.
“No, I didn't—for a very sufficient reason. Down here the ladies do not wear hats. But I'll tell you what I did buy her, Miss Ruey—and oh, by George. I'm glad now I did it. She'll wear them to-morrow when I bring her to see you. I bought her a new black silk dress and an old lace collar, and a gold breast-pin and a tortoise-shell hair comb and hired an open carriage and took her for an evening ride on the Malecon to listen to the band concert.”
“Did she like that?”
“She ate it up,” Billy declared with conviction. “I think it was her first adventure in democracy.” Billy's pulse was still far from normal when he reached El Buen Amigo, for he was infused with a strange, new-found warmth that burned like malarial fever but wasn't. He wasted no preliminaries on Mother Jenks, but bluntly acquainted her with the facts in the case.
Mother Jenks eyed him a moment wildly. “Gord's truth!” she gasped; she reached for her favourite elixir, but Billy got the bottle first.
“Nothing doing,” he warned this strange publican. “Mother, you're funking it—and what would your sainted 'Enery say to that? Do you want that angel to kiss you and get a whiff of this brandy?” Mother Jenks's eyes actually popped. “Gor', Willie,” she gasped, “'aven't Hi told yer she's a lydy! Me kiss the lamb! Hi trusts, Mr. Geary, as ow I knows my plyce an' can keep it.”