"Gee," he muttered, "I almost wisht I'd ben born a farmer. Folks wasn't
made to live in cities."

"Not our kind, at least," she agreed. Followed a pause and a long sigh.
"It's all so beautiful. It would be a dream just to live all your life
in it. I'd like to be an Indian squaw sometimes."

Several times Billy checked himself on the verge of speech.

"About those fellows you thought you was in love with," he said finally.
"You ain't told me, yet."

"You want to know?" she asked. "They didn't amount to anything."

"Of course I want to know. Go ahead. Fire away."

"Well, first there was Al Stanley--"

"What did he do for a livin'?" Billy demanded, almost as with authority.

"He was a gambler."

Billy's face abruptly stiffened, and she could see his eyes cloudy with
doubt in the quick glance he flung at her.

"Oh, it was all right," she laughed. "I was only eight years old. You
see, I'm beginning at the beginning. It was after my mother died and
when I was adopted by Cady. He kept a hotel and saloon. It was down
in Los Angeles. Just a small hotel. Workingmen, just common laborers,
mostly, and some railroad men, stopped at it, and I guess Al Stanley
got his share of their wages. He was so handsome and so quiet and
soft-spoken. And he had the nicest eyes and the softest, cleanest hands.
I can see them now. He played with me sometimes, in the afternoon, and
gave me candy and little presents. He used to sleep most of the day. I
didn't know why, then. I thought he was a fairy prince in disguise. And
then he got killed, right in the bar-room, but first he killed the man
that killed him. So that was the end of that love affair.

"Next was after the asylum, when I was thirteen and living with my
brother--I've lived with him ever since. He was a boy that drove a
bakery wagon. Almost every morning, on the way to school, I used to
pass him. He would come driving down Wood Street and turn in on Twelfth.
Maybe it was because he drove a horse that attracted me. Anyway, I
must have loved him for a couple of months. Then he lost his job, or
something, for another boy drove the wagon. And we'd never even spoken
to each other.

"Then there was a bookkeeper when I was sixteen. I seem to run to
bookkeepers. It was a bookkeeper at the laundry that Charley Long beat
up. This other one was when I was working in Hickmeyer's Cannery. He had
soft hands, too. But I quickly got all I wanted of him. He was... well,
anyway, he had idea