"I wouldn't give a punched nickel for a four-horse load uh them idees, and that's the truth." He passed Pink and went on ahead, disgust in every line of his square-shouldered figure.

"Combin' his chaps, by cripes!" he snorted again, and straightway told the tale profanely to his fellows, who laughed until they were weak and watery-eyed as they listened.
Afterward, because Pink implored them and made a mystery of it, they invited Miguel to take a hand in a long-winded game--rather, a series of games--of seven-up, while his chaps hung to dry upon a willow by the creek bank--or so he believed.
The chaps, however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those of the Countess besides.
"It's a shame, and I just hope Miguel thrashes you both for it," the Little Doctor told them more than once; but she laughed, nevertheless, and showed Pink how to give the twist which made of each lock a corkscrew ringlet.

The Countess stopped, with her dishcloth dangling from one red, bony hand, while she looked.

"You boys couldn't sleep nights if you didn't pester the life outa somebody," she scolded.

"Seems to me I'd friz them diamonds, if I was goin' to be mean enough to do anything." "You would, eh ?" Pink glanced up at her and dimpled.