Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/94

 his brow in deep perplexity. The destiny of mortals was in his hands—but so was the motive power department of the Hill Division. He could no more see Spitzer in a cab than he could see the time-honored camel passing through the eye of a needle. Then inspiration came to him.

"Look here, Spitzer," said he, soothingly. "There ain't any use talking about firing, and I ain't going to let you build up any false hopes. But I'll tell you what, you don't need to feel glum about it. She loves you, don't she?"

Spitzer's lips moved.

"H'm?" inquired Regan solicitously, bending forward.

"Yes; she says she does," repeated Spitzer in thin tones.

"Yes; well then, when you know women, and as much about 'em as I do, you'll know that nothing else counts—nothing but the love, I mean. It's their nature, and they're all alike. That's the way it is with all of 'em"—Regan waved his hand expansively. "It'll be all right. You'll see. She won't hold out on that line."

Some men profit much by little experience, others profit little by much experience. Spitzer, possibly, had had little, very little, but the dejected droop of his shoulders, as he started back for the roundhouse, intimated that in the matter of knowledge as applied to the eternal feminine he was perhaps, in so far as it lay between himself and the master mechanic, the better qualified of the two to speak. And that, certainly,