"'You couldn't open your game that a-way, nohow,' says Doc Peets.
'That's accordin' to Hoyle for sky-pilots an' missionary people; but
a young female a-hoidin' of herse'f high spurns your money. Thar's
nothin' ketches me like a female of my species in distress, an' I
recalls offerin' to stake a lady, who's lost her money somehow, back
in St. Looey once. This yere female was strange to me entire, but if
she'd knowed me from 'way back she couldn't a-blazed up more
frightful. The minute I pulls my bankroll on her, she goes cavortin'
off too hostile to talk. It takes ten minutes to get her back to the
agency to hear me 'pologize, an' even then she glares an' snorts
like she's liable to stampede ag'in. No; you don't want to try an'
give this girl no money. What we-alls needs is to hunt up somethin'
for her to work at an' pay her.'

"'The Doc's right,' says Enright, 'an' the thing is to find
somethin' for this yere lady to do. Any gent with a notion on the
subject can't speak too quick.'

"'No party need take my remarks as personal,' says Burns, who runs
the Red Light, 'as nothin' invidjous is intended; but I rises to say
that a heap of my business is on credit. A gent comes in free an'
sociable, names his sozodont, an' gets it. If he pays cash, all
right; if he wants credit, all right. "You names your day to drink,
an' you names your day to pay," is my motto, as you-alls knows. This
bein' troo, onder present exigences what for a scheme would it be
for me to get an outfit of books,--day-books, week-books, ledgers,
an' the rest of the layout,--an' let this yere maiden keep 'em a
whole lot? I throws this out as a su'gestion.'