eged by her former neighbors in
Sibley, who found it convenient to "put up with the Haneys" while
visiting the town. They were, in fact, very curious to study her in her
new and splendid setting; and though some of them peeked and peered amid
the beds, and thumped the mattresses in vulgar curiosity, the young
housewife merely laughed. All her life had been spent among folk of this
directly inquisitive sort. She expected them to act as they did, and,
being a hearty and generous soul, as well as a very democratic one, she
sent them away happy.

Indeed, she won praise from all who came to know her. But that small
part of the Springs--alien and exclusive--which considered itself higher
if not better than the rest of the Western world, looked askance at "the
gambler's wife and her freak friends," and Mrs. Crego, who was inclined
to be very censorious, alluded to the Haneys as "beggars on horseback"
as she met them on the boulevard.

Of all this critical comment Bertha remained, happily, unconscious, and
it is probable that she would soon have won her way to a decent circle
of friends had not Charles Haney descended upon them like a plague. Mart
had been receiving letters from this brother, but had said nothing to
Bertha of his demands. "Charles despised me when he met me in Denver,"
he explained to Williams. "I was busted at the time, ye mind." He
winked. "And now when he reads in the papers that Mart Haney is rich, he
comes down on me like a hawk on a June bug. 'Tis no matter. He may
come--I'll not cast him out. But he does not play with me
double-eagles--not he!"

Charles Haney was not fitted to raise his brother's wife in the social
scale, for he belonged to that marked, insistent variety of actor to be
distinguished on trains and in the lobbies of hotels--a fat, sleek,
loud-voiced comedian, who enacted scenes from his unwritten plays while
ladling his soup, and who staggered and fell across chairs in
illustration of highly emotional lines and, what was worse, he was of
those who regard every unescorted woman as fair game. Bold of glance and
brassy of smile, he began to make eyes at his sister-in-law from their
first meeting.

She amazed him. He had expected a woman of his own class--an
adventuress, painted, designing; and to find this sweet little
girl--"why, she's too good for Mart," he concluded, and shifted his
hollow pretensions of sympathy from his brother to his sister-in-law.
Before the first evening of his v