arising partly from her need of
hastening to prevent some pot from boiling over and partly from her
failing powers. She had been handsome once--but the heat of the stove,
the steam of the washtub, and the vexation and prolonged effort of her
daily life had warped and faded and battered her into a pathetic wreck
of womanhood.

"I'm going to quit this thing as soon as I get my son's ranch paid for.
You see--"

She did not finish this, but her friend understood. Bertha's time for
schooling was past. She had already entered upon the maiden's land of
dreams--of romance. The men who had hitherto courted her,
half-laughingly, half-guiltily, knowing that she was a child, had at
last dropped all subterfuge. To them she was a "girl," with all that
this word means to males not too scrupulous of the rights of women.

"I oughtn't to quit now when business is so good," Mrs. Gilman returned
to the dining-room to add. "I'm full all the time and crowded on
Saturday. More and more of the boys come down the line on purpose to
stay over Sunday. If I can stick it out a little while--"

The reason why "the boys came down the line to stay over Sunday," was
put into words one day by Winchell, the barber, who took his meals at
the Eagle.

He was a cleanly shaven young man of twenty-four or five, with a
carefully tended brown mustache which drooped below the corners of his
mouth.

He began by saying to Bertha:

"I wish I could get out of my business. Judas, but I get tired of it!
When I left the farm I never s'posed I'd find myself nailed down to the
floor of a barber-shop, but here I am and making good money. How'd you
like to go on a ranch?" he asked, meaningly.

"I don't believe I'd like it. Too lonesome," she replied, without any
attempt to coquette with the hidden meaning of his question. "I kind o'
like this hotel business. I enjoy having new people sifting along every
day. Seems like I couldn't bear to step out into private life again,
I've got so used to this public thing. I only wish mother didn't have to
work so hard--that's all that troubles me at the present time."

Her speech was quite unlike the birdlike chatter with which girls of her
age entertain a lover. She spoke rather slowly and with the gravity of a
man of business, and her blunt phrases made her smile the more
bewitching and her big, brown eyes the more girlish. She did not giggle
or flush--she only looked past his smirking face out into the street
where the s