Chronicles of San Lorenzo: V. Old Man Bobo's Mandy [pp. 483-490]

C4l4on icles of Sas /[oreMzyo.
leave. He was worth, I had reason to
know, at least fifty thousand dollars.
"Say, Mandy, I like ye awful well! D'ye
know it?"
The speaker, Mr. Rinaldo Roberts,
trainer and driver of horses, was sitting
upon the top rail of the fence that divided
the land of old man Bobo from the property of the Race Track Association.
Mandy, freckled,
long-legged, and tow- -
headed, balanced her-
self easily upon one
ill-shod foot and rubbed
herself softly with the
other. The action to
those who knew her
ways denoted mental
perplexity and embarrassment. This assignation was bristling with
peril as well as charm.
Her grandfather had
the eyes of a turkeybuzzard, eyes which she
contrasted involuntarily
with the soft, kindly
orbs now bent upon her.
She decided instantly \'
that blue, azure blue,
was a prettier color than
yellow. Rinaldo's skin,
too, commended itself HOLDING HR SIRTS H
HtOLDING HE R SKIRTS H
to her attention. She STICKE
had never seen so fresh
a skin, so white a forehead, such ruddy
cheeks. David, she reflected, must have
been such a man as this; but Rinaldo was a
nicer name than David, ever so much nicer.
"Shakspere never repeats," observed
Mr. Roberts, " but I'll tell ye again,
Mandy, that I like ye awful well."
"Pshaw!" she replied.
Honest, Mandy, I ain't lyin'."
HIe smoothed his hair, well oiled by the
barber an hour before, wiped his hand upon
his brown overalls, and laughed. It is
worthy of mention that the overalls were
worn so as to expose four inches of black
trouser.
"Ye think more of your sorrel colt than
ye do of me, Nal."
"I do?"
Yes, indeed you do, "coquettishly,
,-you know you do."
IG
R
"I know I don't!
Say — I've gone an'
christened the cuss."
"You have?" said
Mandy, in a tone of
the most intense inter est. "Tell me its
name."
It's'a'her, Mandy,
an' me an' Pete fixed
on By-Jo (Bijou). That
's French, Mandy," he
a d d e d triumphantly,
' "an' it means a gem,
a jool, an' that's what
she is -a regler ruby!"
il'/ "It don't sound like
F. rench," said Amanda
doubtfully.
,, That French fel /a c'\a''- ler," replied Nal, with
the fine scorn of the
Anglo-Saxon, "him as
ON ACCONT OF TH keeps the'L,ast Chance'
,H ON ACCOUJNTO(F THIE
CRASS. saloon, pronounces it
By-Jew, but he's as ignorant as a fool, an' By-Jo seems to come
kind o' nateral."
C Ye might ha' called the colt Amandy,
Nal."
The honest face of Rinaldo flushed scarlet. He squirmed -I use the word advisedly -and nearly fell off the fence.
"If there was a nickel-in-the-slot kickin'
machine around San Lorenzy," he cried,
"I'd take a dollar dose right now! Gosh!
484
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