"You haven't tried the other lot," Hunter protested. "Besides, the instrument seemed to have contracted bronchitis when I last had it out."
"It will do to amuse the boys when the nights get dark," replied Florence. Then she turned to Alison. "One could hardly get a dollar out of him with a lever."
"Doesn't it depend on the kind of lever you use?" Alison asked.
Thorne grinned, but Florence answered unhesitatingly.
"Oh, in the case of the average man it doesn't matter, so long as it's strong enough and you have a fulcrum. We'll admit that the type can be generous, but it's only when it throws a reflected luster on themselves. Otherwise judicious pressure is necessary."
"Are you going to camp with us to-night?" Hunter asked Thorne.
"No," answered the latter. "I have some business at the Bluff, and I want to get off again early to-morrow."
In a few more minutes the teamsters rose, and Hunter, making excuses to Alison, went out with them. Florence looked after them, and then turned to the girl with a disdainful lifting of her brows.
"Cormorants," she commented. "They've been very slow to-night. Eight minutes is about their usual limit. I don't think they even look at their food--it just goes down. I have once or twice suggested to Elcot that he is wasting his money by giving them the things he does. It's difficult, though, to make him listen to reason."
Alison said nothing, and after a while Florence rose.
"We'll have a talk on the veranda while they clear away."
She pointed to a chair when they reached the veranda, and then sank languidly into one close by.
It was not a pleasant task to Alison, for it entailed the mention of her father's death and an account of the difficulties that had followed, but she spoke for a few minutes, and her companion casually expressed her sympathy.
"I can understand why you came out," she added with a bitter laugh. "When I first met you I was earning just enough to keep me on the border line between respectability and--the other thing--that is by the exercise of the most unpleasant self-denial. What I should have done without the extra twelve pounds your mother's guild paid me for playing the piano twice a week at the working girls' club I don't like to think. That is why I made no complaint when they added to my duties the teaching of a class on another evening and the collecting of the subscriptions to the sewing society. Your mother, I heard, informed the committee that in her opinion twelve pounds was a good deal too much, and I believe she added that such a rate of payment was apt to make a young woman of my class far too independent."