x were already well developed within
her. The adulation of the rest of the camp, poured out at her tiny
feet, she took graciously enough, but rather as a matter of course. It
was all her due. But what she wanted was that that big, ugly,
red-headed man, with the cross grey eyes and loud voice, should be
nice to her. She wanted _him_ to pick her up, and set her on his knee,
and whittle wonderful wooden dogs and dolls and boats and boxes for
her with his jack-knife, as Walley Johnson and the others did. With
Walley she would hardly condescend to coquet, so sure she was of his
abject slavery to her whims; and, moreover, as must be confessed with
regret, so unforgiving was she in her heart toward his blank eye. She
merely consented to make him useful, much as she might a convenient
and altogether doting but uninteresting grandmother. To all the other
members of the camp--except the Boss, whom she regarded with some
awe--she would make baby-love impartially and carelessly. But it was
Red McWha whose notice she craved.

When supper was over, and pipes filled and lighted, some one would
strike up a "chantey"--one of those interminable, monotonous
ballad-songs which are peculiar to the lumber camps.

These "chanteys," however robust their wordings or their incidents,
are always sung in a plaintive minor which goes oddly with the
large-moulded virility of the singers. Some are sentimental, or
religious, to the last degree, while others reek with an indecency of
speech that would shroud the Tenderloin in blushes. Both kinds are
equally popular in the camps, and both are of the most astounding
_naivete_. Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen are
not in the least ashamed. They seem unconscious of their enormity.
Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from
the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent "chanteys"
were dropped, as if into oblivion, from the woodsmen's repertoire.

During the songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip
from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in
the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps. Man after man would
snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow
curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or
baby nonsense into her pink little ear. She would listen solemnly for
a minute or two, then wriggle down and move on to another of her
admirers. But before long she