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Updated: May 14, 2025
When she had sucked the neighbourhood dry like an orange, she took a house in another street, and Pinkey lost a day at the factory to move the furniture. Pinkey's father was a silent, characterless man, taking the lead from his wife with admirable docility, and asking nothing from fortune but regular work and time to read the newspaper.
He gambled, and lost no opportunity to get drunk, since he calculated that he got more entertainment for his money out of that than anything else, even at the "bootlegging" price of $20 per quart which prevailed. So he had drifted, learning in the meantime under Pinkey's tutelage to ride and shoot and handle a rope with the best of them.
Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm: "I'm not licked! I won't be licked! I'm going to stick, somehow! And what's more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don't stop calling me 'Gentle Annie, I'll knock your block off!" Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.
Pinkey looked at him thoughtfully and changed the subject. "I see you're playin' a tune on the washboard." Wallie replied stiffly: "Yes, I'm doing a little laundry." Pinkey's criticism of the cake still rankled. "You ain't washin' that blue shirt a'ready?" Pinkey demanded, incredulously. "You only bought it Thanksgivin'."
"Is his horse in the corral?" asked Wallie. Mr. Hicks took observations from the doorway and reported that it was, which deepened the mystery. Since no human being, unless he was drugged or dead, could sleep through the cook's battering with the frying-pan, Wallie himself grew anxious. He recalled Pinkey's gloom of the evening before he had gone to Prouty.
"I was shore pinin' to step in the middle of a horse," was Pinkey's explanation of their eccentric arrival. "It kinda rests me." While all this was happening Wallie stood holding his lemonade tray. When he could get close, he welcomed the Smith boy and was introduced to Pinkey, and stood around long enough to learn that the latter and Helene Spenceley knew each other.
It was too stiff to move, and he used his knuckles. Then he heard footsteps and a rapid whispering, and Pinkey, white with anxiety, opened the door. Mrs Partridge, half dressed, slipped into the bedroom and called out in a loud voice: "Good afternoon, Mr Fowles! 'Ave yer come to take Elizabeth for a walk?" Ignoring Pinkey's whispered advice, he pushed in and looked round.
"It would be an asset, having the Park so close," the latter agreed, his eyes shining. Pinkey went on: "You kin run dudes whur you can't run sheep or cattle. What you need is room and we're there with the room. Fresh air, grasshoppers, views any way you look why, man, you got everything!" "Except money," said Wallie, suddenly. Pinkey's face lengthened. "I hadn't thought of that."
As the displaced cynosure sat brooding in his room the third morning after Pinkey's arrival he wished that he could think of some perfectly well-bred way to attract attention. He believed in the psychology of clothes.
Pinkey's young man had called to take her home, and Chook had recognized him for an old enemy, a wool-washer, called "Stinky" Collins on account of the vile smell of decaying skins that hung about his clothes. Chook began to make love to Pinkey under his very eyes. And Stinky sat in sullen silence, refusing to open his mouth.
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