I got clothes and shoes
for every one of those poor burned-out fellows, but there wouldn't
anybody else have done it. And nursing?--you ought to have seen those
boys come to thank me the day I went out to the Presidio, an' most
cried--some of them did;--said their own mothers couldn't have done
more, and they'd do anything for me now. But when I went out to their
camp at Paco their major just as much as ordered me away, and that
little whipper-snapper, Lieutenant Ray, that I could take on my knee
and spank---- He--Lieutenant Ray--a friend of yours? Well, you may
_think_ he is, or you may be a friend of _his_, but _I_ can tell you
right here and now he's no friend, and you'll see he isn't. What's
more, I hate to see an honest, high-toned young gentleman just
throwing himself away on people that can't appreciate him. I could
tell you----"

"Stop, driver!" shouted Stuyvesant, unable longer to control himself.
"Miss Perkins," he added, as the little coachman manfully struggled to
bring his rushing team to a halt at the curb, "I have a call to make and
am late. Tell my coachman where to take you and send him back to this
corner. Good-night, madam," and, gritting his teeth, out he sprang to
the sidewalk.

It happened to be directly in front of one of those native resorts
where, day and night, by dozens the swarthy little brown men gather
about a billiard-table with its centre ornament of boxwood pins, betting
on a game resembling the Yankee "pin pool" in everything but the
possibility of fair play. Hovering about the entrance or on the
outskirts of the swarm of men and boys, a dozen native women, some with
babies in their arms and nearly all with cigars between their teeth,
stood watching the play with absorbing interest, and a score of dusky,
pot-bellied children from two to twelve years of age sprawled about the
premises, as much at home as the keeper of the place.

The lamps had been lighted but a few minutes and the game was in full
blast. Some stalwart soldiers, regulars from the Cuartel de Malate from
down the street or the nipa barracks of the Dakotas and Idahos, were
curiously studying the scene, making jovial and unstinted comment after
their fearless democratic fashion, but sagely abstaining from trying
their luck and not so sagely sampling the sizzling soda drinks held
forth to them by tempting hands. Liquor the vendors dare not
proffer,--the provost marshal's people had forbidden that,--and only at
the license