ess it, I had thought;
but now I understood.

[Illustration]

The frump was _this_ sort! Poor Frances! Poor Frances!

I was just considering the advisability of tactfully trying to shame
this girl into taking the next train, or whatever it is, back to China,
when suddenly my devilish active mind hit right on the explanation of
her conduct! Bores me, you know, the way things come to me at times when
I am not looking for them at all. Still, this time, I was rather glad.
Might confound her and put her on the run if she knew that a shrewd,
eagle-eyed man of the world had penetrated her mask.

So I coughed significantly in lieu of using her dashed name, and lifted
my monocle so I could bore her sidewise through narrowed eyes.

"Dare say you've put up with Frances though for _Jack's_ sake!" I let
her have it coldly, deliberately. "Brother Jack has been a sort of
compensation--_that's_ it, eh?"

And I shot her a foxy wink!

That is, I _almost_ did--pulled up, though, just on the brink. By Jove,
gave me cold marrows for an instant, thinking how I might have
compromised myself, you know. Besides, I could spare her _that_--had
rubbed it in so devilish raw, anyhow. That is, you would have thought
so; for that sort of thing said to a normal Yankee girl would have
stirred her pride or unchained the jolly lightnings from her eyes--_you_
know!

But dashed if this imported freak didn't suddenly nod with a sort of
chokey snuffle and reach out her hand for mine.

"How you _do_ understand!" she crooned unblushingly, and she leaked a
big cold tear down upon my hand and let another splash my cuff--and
Jenkins hadn't come with my things yet, dash it! "I _do_ try to be
patient about Francis for Jacky's sake--he asked me to: and I do try not
to mind the way things are run, but oh, Mr. Lightnut, what this place
needs is a _head_!" She almost squeezed my hand, and blinked damply at
me out of her pasty face. "And then," she snuffled, "I do so want to
make a home for my father and my brothers. They have _never_ known what
it was to have a _home_--think of it!"

I didn't want to think of it--besides, I didn't believe it. I knew
people _have_ to have homes, dash it--it's the law. If they go in for
that sort of thing--not having homes, you know--they're arrested. Still,
in a rum country like China, it might be different, of course. However,
I didn't take time to give this much thought, for I was so devilish
floored--irritated, you know