t once in a while, when the house needs paintin', or the
doctor bills are up, or his oldest kid wants a bicycle, he jumps out an'
makes fifty or a hundred bucks before some of the clubs. I want you to
meet him when it comes handy. He's some boy I'm tellin' you. But it did
make me sick that night."

Again the harshness and anger were in his face, and Saxon amazed herself
by doing unconsciously what women higher in the social scale have done
with deliberate sincerity. Her hand went out impulsively to his holding
the lines, resting on top of it for a moment with quick, firm pressure.
Her reward was a smile from lips and eyes, as his face turned toward
her.

"Gee!" he exclaimed. "I never talk a streak like this to anybody. I just
hold my hush an' keep my thinks to myself. But, somehow, I guess it's
funny, I kind of have a feelin' I want to make good with you. An' that's
why I'm tellin' you my thinks. Anybody can dance."

The way led uptown, past the City Hall and the Fourteenth Street
skyscrapers, and out Broadway to Mountain View. Turning to the right
at the cemetery, they climbed the Piedmont Heights to Blair Park and
plunged into the green coolness of Jack Hayes Canyon. Saxon could not
suppress her surprise and joy at the quickness with which they covered
the ground.

"They are beautiful," she said. "I never dreamed I'd ever ride behind
horses like them. I'm afraid I'll wake up now and find it's a dream.
You know, I dream horses all the time. I'd give anything to own one some
time."

"It's funny, ain't it?" Billy answered. "I like horses that way. The
boss says I'm a wooz at horses. An' I know he's a dub. He don't know the
first thing. An' yet he owns two hundred big heavy draughts besides this
light drivin' pair, an' I don't own one."

"Yet God makes the horses," Saxon said.

"It's a sure thing the boss don't. Then how does he have so many?--two
hundred of 'em, I'm tellin' you. He thinks he likes horses. Honest to
God, Saxon, he don't like all his horses as much as I like the last
hair on the last tail of the scrubbiest of the bunch. Yet they're his.
Wouldn't it jar you?"

"Wouldn't it?" Saxon laughed appreciatively. "I just love fancy
shirtwaists, an' I spent my life ironing some of the beautifullest I've
ever seen. It's funny, an' it isn't fair."

Billy gritted his teeth in another of his rages.

"An' the way some of them women gets their shirtwaists. It makes me
sick, thinkin' of you ironin' 'em. You kno