Nell Gwyn, that you see pictured in the galleries of Europe--all very
mild and girlish, with moist red mouths, like a puppy's, so that you
wonder if they have not been basely defamed through all the centuries.

The Kearney girl's father ran a saloon out on Second Avenue, and every
few days the Chippewa paper would come out with a story of a brawl, a
knifing, or a free-for-all fight following a Saturday night in
Kearney's. The Kearney girl herself was forever running up and down
Grand Avenue, which was the main business street. She would trail up and
down from the old Armory to the post-office and back again. When she
turned off into the homeward stretch on Outagamie Street there always
slunk after her some stoop-shouldered, furtive, loping youth. But he
never was seen with her on Grand Avenue. She had often been up before
old Judge Colt for some nasty business or other. At such times the
shabby office of the Justice of the Peace would be full of shawled
mothers and heavy-booted, work-worn fathers, and an aunt or two, and
some cousins, and always a slinking youth fumbling with the hat in his
hands, his glance darting hither and thither, from group to group, but
never resting for a moment within any one else's gaze. Of all these
present, the Kearney girl herself was always the calmest. Old Judge Colt
meted out justice according to his lights. Unfortunately, the wearing of
a yellow badge on the breast was a custom that had gone out some years
before.

This nymph it was who had taken a fancy to Buzz Werner. It looked very
black for his future.

The strange part of it was that the girl possessed little attraction for
Buzz. It was she who made all the advances. Buzz had sprung from very
decent stock, as you shall see. And something about the sultry