"Now, look at that pretty creature over there——"
The young miner followed his companion's gaze through the garishly lit crowd. Then, as though in doubt as to whether he had seen correctly, he tried it again.
"Which do you mean?" he asked, puzzled.
"The one in red. Now, she——"
The Westerner snorted irrepressibly.
"What's the matter with you?" inquired the Easterner, looking on him with suspicious eyes.
The other choked his laugh in the middle, and instantly assumed an expression of intense solemnity. It was as though a candle had blown out in the wind.
"Beg pardon. Nothing," he asserted with brevity of enunciation. "Go on."
The girl in red was standing tiptoe on a bench under one of the big lanterns. She was holding her little palm slantwise over the chimney, and by blowing against it was trying to put out the lamp. Her face was very serious and flushed. Occasionally the lamp would flare up a little, and she would snatch her hand away with a pretty gesture of dismay as the uprising flame would threaten to scorch it. A group of interested men surrounded and applauded her. Two on the outside stood off the proprietor of the dance-hall. The proprietor was objecting.
"Well, then, just look at that girl, I say," the Easterner went on. "She's as pretty and fresh and innocent as a mountain flower. She's having the time of her young life, and she just thinks it means a good time and nothing else. Some day she'll find out it means a lot else. I tell you, it's awful!"