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In it there was some of the mischief of fairyland. "What you need is Millings," prescribed Sylvester. "Girlie and Babe will wake you up. Yes, and the boys. You'll make a hit in Millings." He contemplated her for an instant with his head on one side. "We ain't got anything like you in Millings."
"What can you read?" "You're goin' to be famous. You're goin' to make Millings famous. Girl, you're goin' to be a picture that will live in the hearts of fellows and keep 'em warm when they're herding winter nights. The thought of you is goin' to keep 'em straight and pull 'em back here. You 're goin' to be a a sort of a beacon light."
He sat forward, his hands hanging between his knees, his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and fro after their prey. The heat was a humid, solid, breathless weight a heat unknown to Millings. Dickie wore his threadbare blue serge suit. It felt like a garment of lead.
"I was raised in Millings" Dickie named the Western State "I didn't get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel." "Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he sighed. "I dare say one of these days " He was absent and irritable again.
He leaned forward with his arms folded along the back of the front seat and pointed out the beauties of Millings. He showed Sheila the Garage, the Post-Office, and the Trading Company, and suddenly pressing her shoulder with his hand, he cracked out sharply: "There's The Aura, girl!" His eyes were again those of the artist and the visionary. They glowed. Sheila turned her head.
Why just for the credit of Millings, she's gotta go." "Why fuss her about it, if she don't want to?" Girlie's soft voice was poured like oil on the troubled billows of Babe's outburst. "I'll see to her," Sylvester's chair scraped the floor as he rose. "I know how to manage girls. Trust Poppa!" He pushed through the door, followed by Babe. Sheila looked up at him helplessly.
He could hear a coyote wailing off there in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here, distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice.
Sheila, looking out at the wide Nebraskan prairies that slipped endlessly past her window hour by hour that day, felt that she would not make a hit at Millings. She was afraid of Millings. Her terror of Babe and Girlie was profound. She had lived and grown up, as it were, under her father's elbow. Her adoration of him had stood between her and experience.
There was to be a beginning, a fresh start, a chance. He went over to the chair where Sheila had sat in the comfort, of his arms and he touched the piece of tapestry on its back. That was his good-bye to Millings. Then he fastened his collar, smoothed his hair, standing close before Sheila's mirror, peering and blinking through the smoke, and buttoned his coat painstakingly.
I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't good enough for my purpose not for mine."
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