bet. And
how did a decent woman happen to have all the fancy clothes which
Belle Lorrigan possessed? And jewelry enough to stock a store with!
Three rings on one finger at one time and the same time was going it
pretty strong, in the opinion of the Black Rim ladies. They also
believed that she used paint and powder, which damned her beyond all
hope of redemption.

Poor Belle Lorrigan (Black Rim country spoke of her always as Belle
Lorrigan without in the least understanding why she remained an
individual personality to them instead of becoming merely Mrs.
Lorrigan--Mrs. Tom, even, since many of the Black Rim women were
designated by the nicknames of their husbands)! She would have been
glad to be friendly, simply because friendliness was in her blood and
would out. She would have been glad to receive them at the Devil's
Tooth ranch for one of those all-day visits which were the custom of
the country. But for a long while they did not come. Sometimes she
would meet a family bundled to the eyes against the chill winds of
Idaho, bumping over the rough roads on their way to visit some near
neighbor who lived only ten or fifteen miles away. She would flash
them a smile while she pulled up her bronco team out of the trail to
make a generous room for their passing, and she would shout something
pleasant as they went by. And after they had gone on she would shrug
her fine, broad shoulders and call them cats, going out to a
scratching, with all the kittens mewing along. She would flap a
hand--providing the bronco team left her a hand free to flap--and
shake her head, and say, "Not for mine, thank you!" And would be hurt
down deep in her heart where it did not show, because they never
stopped at her door.

But when the boys began to come, then came the neighbor women, making
formal two-hour calls upon the new mother, eager to see and to hear
and to go away and compare notes afterward. They talked much of the
names that Belle Lorrigan called her children. The first one she named
for the hero in her first play; wanting, I suppose, a souvenir of the
time when she was fifteen and had her first speaking part on the
stage. She called her first-born Algernon Adelbert. Algernon Adelbert
Lorrigan, grandson of old Tom Lorrigan! Think of that!

But Algernon Adelbert no sooner outgrew his cradle than he was known
to all and sundry as Al Lorrigan, so that no harm was done him in
giving him such a name. He grew up lusty and arrogant, a goo