painters; that Westerners are more spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners; that London must be a very foggy city, and that California must be quite lovely in the springtime. And of many other opinions indicating a keeping up with the world’s best thought.
These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and evidence: Ileen had theories of her own. One, in particular, she disseminated to us untiringly. Flattery she detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and action, she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and woman. If ever she could like any one, it would be for those qualities.
“I’m awfully weary,” she said, one evening, when we three musketeers of the mesquite were in the little parlor, “of having compliments on my looks paid to me. I know I’m not beautiful.”
(Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all he could do to keep from calling her a liar when she said that.)
“I’m only a little Middle-Western girl,” went on Ileen, “who justs wants to be simple and neat, and tries to help her father make a humble living.”
(Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand
