“Have you met Bully Presby yet?” she asked.
They smiled, and told her they had.
“He is a wonderful man,” she said admiringly. “He makes his way over everything and everybody. He is ruthless in going after what he wants. He fears nothing above or below. I honestly believe that if the arch demon were to block him on the trail, Bully Presby would take a chance and try to throw him over a cliff. I don’t suppose he ever had a vice or a human emotion. I believe I’d like him better if he had a little of both.”
Dick laughed outright, and stared at her with renewed interest. He admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a woman, who used 121 classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech, and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom she made her living. He began to believe what was commonly said of her, that her virtue, physical and ethical, was unassailable.
There was a crash and a loud guffaw of laughter. They pulled the curtains farther apart, and looked across at the man who was celebrating. He had dropped a bottle of wine to the floor below, and was beseeching some one to bring it up to him.
Bill leaned farther out of the box to look, and suddenly the drummer saw him, pointed in his direction with a drumstick, and spoke to a girl leaning near by. She, too, looked up, and then clapped her hands.
“There he is!” she called in her high treble voice. “Up there in number five! The man that carried Pearl out and got burned himself.”
Some man near her climbed to the little stage and pointed, took off his hat, and shouted: “A tiger for that man! Now! All together! Whooee! Whooee! Whooee! Ow!”
In the wild yell that every one joined, Bill was abashed. He shrank back into the box, flushed and embarrassed, while Dick laughed outright, with boyish enjoyment at his confusion, and The Lily watched him with a soft look in her eyes, and then stared down at the floor below.