Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother! What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess. He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man too, if he is a rotten bad lot."
The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of an extra sitting at an adjoining table.
After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he did not happen to know when pay-day was.
Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:—
"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along,
Singing a song so gayly,
He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang
And he charmed the heart of a lady,
And he charmed—"
Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.
"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner so soon," she explained in a voice soft and low.
"That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table. Don't let me disturb you."
Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, lean face that went so well with the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful smile.
The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you—were hurt."