“Lordy!  I reckoned to git here afore you’d get through fixin’ up, and in time to do a little prinkin’ myself, and here you’re out already.”  She laughed, glancing at his clean shirt and damp hair.  “But all the same, we kin have a talk, and you kin tell me all the news afore the other wimmen get up here.  It’s a coon’s age since I was at Sacramento and saw anybody or anything.”  She stopped and, instinctively detecting some vague reticence in the man before her, said, still laughing, “You’re Mr. Hemmingway, ain’t you?”

Hemmingway took off his hat quickly, with a slight start at his forgetfulness.  “I beg your pardon; yes, certainly.”

“Aunty Stanton thought it was ‘Hummingbird,’” said the girl, with a laugh, “but I reckoned not.  I’m Jinney Jules, you know; folks call me ‘J.  J.’  It wouldn’t do for a Hummingbird and a Jay Jay to be in the same camp, would it?  It would be just too funny!”

Hemmingway did not find the humor of this so singularly exhaustive, but he was already beginning to be ashamed of his attitude towards her.  “I’m very sorry to be giving you all this trouble by my intrusion, for I was quite willing to stay at the store yonder.  Indeed,” he added, with a burst of frankness quite as sincere as her own, “if you think your father will not be offended, I would gladly go there now.”

If he still believed in her coquetry and vanity, he would have been undeceived and crushed by the equal and sincere frankness with which she met this ungallant speech.

“No!  I reckon he wouldn’t care, if you’d be as comf’ble and fit for to-morrow.  But ye wouldn’t,” she said reflectively.  “The boys thar sit up late over euchre, and swear a heap, and Simpson, who’d sleep alongside of ye, snores pow’ful, I’ve heard.  Aunty Stanton kin do her level at that, too, and they say”—­with a laugh—­“that I kin, too, but you’re away off in that corner, and it won’t reach you.  So, takin’ it all, by the large, you’d better stay whar ye are.  We wimmen, that is, the most of us, will be off and away down to Rattlesnake Bar shoppin’ afore sun up, so ye’ll sleep ez long ez ye want to, and find yer breakfast ready when ye wake.  So I’ll jest set to and get ye some supper, and ye kin tell me all the doin’s in Sacramento and ’Frisco while I’m workin’.”

In spite of her unconscious rebuff to his own vanity, Hemmingway felt a sense of relief and less constraint in his relations to this decidedly provincial hostess.

“Can I help you in any way?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, ye might bring me an armful o’ wood from the pile under the alders, ef ye ain’t afraid o’ dirtyin’ your coat,” she said tentatively.