put him out of conceit with our plain ways. I reckon
ye didn't take that to mind when you've been hustlin' round payin' two
hundred and fifty dollar drafts for Jack and quo'llin' with Bijah! I
ain't sayin' nothin', father, only mebbe if Bijah had had drafts and
extrys flourished around him a little more, mebbe he'd have been more
polite and not so rough spoken. Mebbe," she continued with a little
laugh, "even I'D be a little more in the style to suit Master Jack when
he comes ef I had three hundred dollars' worth of convent schoolin' like
Mamie Harris."

"Yes, and you'd have only made yourself fair game for ev'ry schemin',
lazy sport or counter-jumper along the road from this to Sacramento!"
responded Hays savagely.

Zuleika laughed again constrainedly, but in a way that might have
suggested that this dreadful contingency was still one that it was
possible to contemplate without entire consternation. As she moved
slowly towards the door she stopped, with her hand on the lock, and said
tentatively: "I reckon you won't be wantin' any supper before you go?
You're almost sure to be offered suthin' up at Horseley's, while if I
have to cook you up suthin' now and still have the men's regular supper
to get at seven, it makes all the expense of an extra meal."

Hays hesitated. He would have preferred his supper now, and had his
daughter pressed him would have accepted it. But economy, which was
one of Zuleika's inherited instincts, vaguely appearing to him to be a
virtue, interchangeable with chastity and abstemiousness, was certainly
to be encouraged in a young girl. It hardly seems possible that with an
eye single to the integrity of the larder she could ever look kindly on
the blandishments of his sex, or, indeed, be exposed to them. He said
simply: "Don't cook for me," and resumed his attitude before the fire as
the girl left the room.

As he sat there, grim and immovable as one of the battered fire-dogs
before him, the wind in the chimney seemed to carry on a deep-throated,
dejected, and confidential conversation with him, but really had very
little to reveal. There were no haunting reminiscences of his married
life in this room, which he had always occupied in preference to the
company or sitting-room beyond. There were no familiar shadows of the
past lurking in its corners to pervade his reverie. When he did reflect,
which was seldom, there was always in his mind a vague idea of a central
injustice to which he had b