the right kind of dry goods will
make in a girl, won't it? The last I saw of Cornie she was wearin' a
skirt that sagged in the back, a punky lid that might have come off the
top of an ash can, and shoes that had run over at the heel.

But prosperity had sure blown her way, and she'd bought a wardrobe to
suit the times. Not that she'd gone and loaded herself down like she
was a window display. It was just a cucumber green sort of cheese
cloth that floated around her, and there wa'n't a frill on it except
some silvery braid where the square hole had been chopped out to let
her head and part of her shoulders through. But at that it didn't need
any Paris tag.

And say, I'd always had an idea that Cornelia Ann was rated about third
row back. Seein' the way she showed up there, though, with all that
cinnamon coloured hair of hers piled on top of her head, and her big
eyes glistenin', I had to revise the frame up. It didn't take me long
to find out she'd shook the shrinkin' violet game, too. She steps up
and gives us the glad hand and the gurgly jolly just as if she'd been
doin' it all her life.

It wa'n't any cheap hang-out that Cornie has tacked her name plate on,
either. There was expensive rugs on the floor, and brass lamps hangin'
from the ceilin', and pieces of tin armor hung around on the walls,
with nary a sign of an oil stove or a foldin' bed.

A lot of folks was already on the ground. They was swells too, and
they was floatin' around so thick that it was two or three minutes
before I gets a view of what was sittin' under the big yellow sik lamp
shade in the corner. Say, who do you guess? Swifty Joe! Honest, for
a minute I thought I must be havin' a nerve spasm and seein' things
that wa'n't so. But it was him, all right; big as life, and lookin' as
prominent as a soap ad. on the back cover of a magazine.

There was plenty of shady places in the room that he might have picked,
but he has hunted out the bright spot. He's sittin' on one of these
funny cross legged Roman stools, with his toes turned in, and them
grid-iron pants pulled up to show about five inches of MacGregor plaid
socks. And he has a satisfied look on his face that I couldn't account
for no way.

Course, I thinks right off that he's broke into the wrong ranch and is
waitin' for some one to come and show him the way out. And then, all
of a sudden, I begins to remember things. You know, it was Swifty that
Cornelia Ann used to get t