Ileen."

"Why, my nose isn't so long!" said she, opening her eyes wide and
touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger.

"Why--er--I mean," said I--"I mean as to mental endowments."

"Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks had got
theirs.

"Thank every one of you," she said, very, very sweetly, "for being
so frank and honest with me. That's the way I want you to be always.
Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we'll all be
the best friends in the world. And now, because you've been so good
to me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but
pay me exaggerated compliments, I'll sing and play a little for you."

Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we would have been
better pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to
face with us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti--
not even on the farewellest of the diva's farewell tours. She had a
cooing little voice like that of a turtle-dove that could almost fill
the parlor when the windows and doors were closed, and Betty was not
rattling the lids of the stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I
estimate at about eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills
sounded like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother's iron wash-pot.
Believe that she must have been beautiful when I tell you that it
sounded like music to us.

Ileen's musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of
sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered
composition on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing
from right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and
Sankey. By request she always wound up with "Sweet Violets" and "When
the Leaves Begin to Turn."

When we left at ten o'clock the three of us would go down to Jacks'
little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and
trying to pump one another for clews as to which way Miss Ileen's
inclinations seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals--they do
not avoid and glower at one another; they convene and converse and
construe--striving by the art politic to estimate the strength of the
enemy.

One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at once
flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His
name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a
recent graduate of a southwestern law school. His Prince Albe