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"That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion to question me. 'You're from the West, he said; and when I told him 'Millings, he kind of gasped and sat up.

But, for all her quietness, the shadow of his broken heart upon her spirit, she was a Puck. She could make laughter and mischief for him and for herself not for any one else yet; she was too shy. But that might come. Only, Puck laughter is a little unearthly, a little delicate. The ear of Millings might not be attuned.... Just now, Sheila felt that she would never laugh again.

When his visitors had gone, the painter went feverishly to work. The day before his death, Sheila, under his whispered directions, put the last touches to the body of the "automobile." "It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do for Millings." He turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a monument to fallen hope.

The graphophone was playing in the saloon. Its music some raucous, comic song insulted the night. "Why, no," said Dickie, "I don't hate Millings. I never thought about it that way. It's not such a bad place. Honest, it isn't. There's lots of fine folks in it. Have you met Jim Greely?" "Why, no, but I've seen him. Isn't that Girlie's 'fellow'?" Dickie made round, respectful eyes.

Nothing solid or respectable about them. Take a boy like Robert, now, or Jim " Sheila put her hands to her ears. Her face, between the hands, looked rather wicked in a sprite-like fashion. "Don't mention to me Mr. James Greely of the Millings National Bank!" Babe rose pompously. "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night, Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily.

His own eyes skipped hers, now across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But, sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about on his finger and whistled to himself.

She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to apologize. "Your father has been so awfully kind to me. I am so grateful. And the girls are awfully good to me. But, Millings, you know? I wouldn't have told you," she said half-angrily, "if I hadn't been so sure you hated it." They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small, scattered lights of the town.

Sheila looked up and the tears fell. She brushed them from her cheeks. "A missus?" "Yes'm my wife. And a couple of gels about your age. Well, say, we've got a job for you." Sheila put her hand to her head as though she would stop a whirling sensation there. "You mean you have some work for me in your home?" "You've got it first time. Yes, ma'am. Sure thing. At Millings, finest city in the world.

Below, there began to be an extraordinary view of the golden country with its orange mesas and its dark, purple rim of mountains. Millings was a tiny circle of square pebbles, something built up by children in their play. The awful impersonalities of sky and earth swept away its small human importance. Thatcher's larkspur-colored eyes absorbed serenity.

On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart.