Must have been just as she'd got to them lines that the Boss began taking a good look at her. I saw him gazin' into her eyes like he'd taken out a search warrant. Don't know as I could blame him much, either. She was a top liner. Wasn't anything coy or kittenish about her. She stood up and gave him as good as he sent. Next I see him make the only fool play but one that I ever knew the Boss to make—reg'lar kid trick.
"Here," says he, pulling off the big carbuncle ring he always wears, "that's to remember me by."
She didn't even look at it. No joolry for hers. Instead, she says something kind of low and sassy, pokes her face up, and begins to pucker.
The Boss he sort of side steps and squints over his shoulder at me. Now, I'm not sayin' what I'd do if a girl like that gave me the Cissy Loftus eye. It ain't up to me. But I know what I'd want the crowd to do—and I did it.
When I turned around again they was just at the breakaway, so it must have been one of the by-by forever kind, such as you see at the dock on sailing day. Then she took us down to show us how she came in, and squeezed herself through the bars. They shook hands just once, and that was all.
That night there was a grand howl from the brigands. They had put in hours of real work, the kind they'd figured on cutting out after they got into the brigand business, only to run into a burglar-proof shutter which we had put up. They pranced around to the front gate and shook their fists at us, and called us American pigs, and invited us to come out and have our ears trimmed, and a lot of nonsense like that. I wanted to turn loose the blunderbusses, but the Boss said: "No, let 'em enjoy themselves."
"How long do you suppose they'll keep that sort of thing up?" says I.
"Vincenzo says some of them will stay around all summer unless we buy them off," says he.
"That's lovely," says I, "for anyone that's dead gone on the life here."
"I'm not," says he. "I can't get out of here too quick, now."