“Sure. But how’s that girl? It don’t matter much about an old cuss like me. Girls are a heap scarcer.”
The owner of the High Light looked troubled for a moment, and removed her gloves before answering.
“Doctor Mills says she will live,” she said quietly, “but she is terribly burned. She will be so disfigured that she can never work in a dance hall any more. It’s pretty rough luck.”
Dick recoiled and felt a chill at this hard, cold statement. The girl could never work in a dance hall any more! And this was accepted as a calamity! Accustomed as he was to the frontier, this matter-of-fact acceptance of a dance-hall occupation as something desirable impressed him with its cynicism. Not that he doubted the virtue of many of those forlorn ones who gayly tripped their feet over rough boards, and drank tea or ginger ale and filled their pockets with bar checks to make a living as best they might, but because the whole garish, rough, drink-laden, curse-begrimed atmosphere of a camp dance hall revolted him.
Mrs. Meredith had intuition, and read men as she read books, understandingly. She arose to the defense of her sex.
“Well,” she said, facing him, as if he had voiced his sentiment, “what would you have? Women are what men make them, no better, no worse.”
“I have made no criticism,” he retorted.
“No, but you thought one,” she asserted. “But, pshaw! I didn’t come here to argue. I 112 came up to tell you that the dance-hall girl will recover and has friends who will see that she doesn’t starve, even if she no longer works in my place. Also, I came to see how Mister––what is your name, anyway?––is.”
“Mathews, ma’am. William Mathews. My friends call me Bill. I don’t allow the others to call me anything.”