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She was standing at the door of the caravan washing, and Jinx was busily engaged hanging out the clothes on a line which had been stretched between the two caravans. 'Halloa, young 'un! said he, as Rosalie came up; 'and where have you sprung from? Rosalie told him that she had spent the night with a friend who lived in the town, and was going to continue her journey.
"That's twice we've put a spoke in his wheel; once when he tried to swindle Miss Berwick in the matter of that mortgage and again when he blackjacked Harvey and looted his safe. We sure have been a jinx for him."
"You see," he said painfully, "what only amuses you in that idea is well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily." "I only meant " she was very uncomfortable. "You are so real and dependable and kind, and I " "I know what you mean. Like Jinx, there. I'm sorry! I didn't mean that. But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it. You see, I happen to care." "Willy!"
Charity and Anne decided on a formal tea, up in the former's room, but the solemnity of the occasion was banished when Peggy rose to read some farewell poesy, concocted by herself and the "Jinx." "She hoped to be the hope of Hope Alas, how soon she flew, To bleak New England's rock-ribbed hills, Ere she her Virgil knew." "And we her comrades tried and true, No laurel crowns may weave.
"But you're not going to give up trying to find out who put acid on the trapeze, are you?" "No, indeed!" declared the young performer. "I have two problems on my hands now that and trying to learn how too many persons came to the circus this afternoon," and he told Helen about the extra tickets. "That's queer!" she exclaimed. "Some jinx bug must be after us!"
"You got her all worked up, Betty. I'm not blaming you. It's just my jinx. She took it into her head I'd been treating you mean, and she kicked at the Casino. I gotta close it down or nix on the heir thing. That was enough for me. I'm going to turn it into a hotel." He relighted his cigar. "And now, just as I got her smoothed down, along comes this darned tenement business.
"I don't know why you stay anyhow," she said, staring into the yard where Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed. "The food's awful. I'm used to it, but you're not." "You don't eat anything, Edith." "I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie you up with us, anyhow? We're a poor lot. You're not comfortable and you know it. D'you know where she is now?"
Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth, now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind was active and not particularly coordinate. The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd and Louis Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to loot and burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying: "You shall not pass"; Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily.
Always after those futile excursions he was inclined to long silences, and only Jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room at night, in the second-hand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world where the fields bore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp, and through which field he and Lily wandered like children, hand in hand.
One adopted the plan of "expecting disappointment" as a means of cheating the "jinx." I am not painting my early life as any darker than most lives. It was, I fancy, as bright as the average life of youth. But, contrary to what is generally held, I venture to think that youth is not a specially happy period.
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