"I feel greatly disappointed in you, Mr. Porter," Margaret Anglin said
to Bill as we took our places at the table.

"In what have I failed?"

"You promised to bring your Western friend--that terrible Mr.
Jennings--to criticize the play."

"Well, I have introduced him." He waved his hand down toward me.

Miss Anglin looked me over with the trace of a smile in her eye.

"Pardon me," she said, "but I can hardly associate you with the lovely
things they say of you. Did you like the play?"

I told her I didn't. It was unreal. No man of the West would shake
dice for a lady in distress. The situation was unheard of and could
only occur in the imagination of a fat-headed Easterner who had never
set his feet beyond the Hudson.

Miss Anglin laughed merrily. "New York is wild over it; New York
doesn't know any better."

Porter sat back, an expansive smile spreading a light in his gray eyes.

"I am inclined to agree with our friend," he offered. "The West is
unacquainted with Manhattan chivalry."

That is the truth in a sentence; and while O. Henry and Jennings have