here bein' a divil's lot of
excursions and conferences and holy gatherin's in Askatoon that time
back, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like the
Dioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was their
bluff; but they'd come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thing
before all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which ever
infested the West. Come--he come like that!"--Deely made a motion like
a swoop of an aeroplane to earth--"and here he is buckin' about like a
rough-neck same as you and me; but yet a gent, a swell, a cream della
cream, that's turned his back on a lady--a lady not his own wife, that's
my sure and sacred belief."

"You certainly have got women on the brain," retorted Sibley. "I ain't
ever seen such a man as you. There never was a woman crossing the street
on a muddy day that you didn't sprint to get a look at her ankles.
Behind everything you see a woman. Horses is your profession, but woman
is your practice."

"There ain't but one thing worth livin' for, and that's a woman,"
remarked Deely.

"Do you tell Mrs. Deely that?" asked Sibley.

"Watch me now, she knows. What woman is there don't know when her
husband is what he is! And it's how I know that the trouble with James
Gathorne Kerry is a woman. I know the signs. Divils me own, he's got 'em
in his face."

"He's got in his face what don't belong here and what you don't know
much about--never having kept company with that sort," rejoined Sibley.

"The way he lives and talks--'No, thank you, I don't care for any
thing,' says he, when you're standin' at the door of a friendly saloon,
which is established by law to bespeak peace and goodwill towards men,
and you ask him pleasant to step inside. He don't seem to have a single
vice. Haven't we tried him? There was Belle Bingley, all frizzy hair and
a kicker; we put her on to him. But he give her ten dollars to buy a hat
on condition she behaved like a lady in the future--smilin' at her, the
divil! And Belle, with temper like dinnemite, took it kneelin' as it
were, and smiled back at him--her! Drink, women--nothin' seems to have a
hold on him. What's his vice? Sure, then, that's what I say, what's his
vice? He's got to have one; any man as is a man has to have one vice."

"Bosh! Look at me," rejoined Sibley. "Drink women--nit! Not for me! I've
got no vice. I don't even smoke."

"No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--what