"The whole idea," she went on, "is to save hours of daylight so the millionaires that go down there will have more time to spend their money. I guess they figure they're giving them more for their money that way too--they go down there for sunshine after all, and if daylight saving can give them more hours of sunshine . . ." her round, plump face looked suddenly perlexed. "How can it, though? How can it really make any difference? I've never been able to figure that out. Anyway, the only really nice thing about it is that the bars can stay open till three, instead of closing at two like the bars in Los Angeles, and around. Palm Springs time, three o'clock, that is--of course, y'know, that's really two, after all. I don't know who they're fooling, unless it's just themselves." She sipped some of the coffee the waitress had brought her, made a wry face, and set the cup down. "When we were in Palm Springs seeing about this job we're getting--I'm to be a maid at this resort, y'know, and he's to be a sort of handyman--we happened to see Van Johnson and Errol Flynn--together! Y'know, they're a couple of good looking boys. I wish I'd waited for something like that instead of grabbing the first man that asked me." She smiled and took another sip of coffee. "Y'know, the rents in Palm Springs are unbelievable," she said. "The place where we're going to work charges a hundred and fifty dollars a night for two people." She laughed. "That's why we're waiting in Banning for the job to open up!" Mrs. Godwin wasn't the only one who considered the Palm Springs rates of rental too high. One night a thin, brisk little man came into the office and asked mildly what our rates were. As soon as I told him he began to fill in a registration card, and while he wrote, he talked. I had become expert at reading names upside down as they were being written, partly so that I could flatter and surprise customers by calling them by name immediately, and partly so that I could write down at once on my list which cabin had been rented by whom. This, I learned, was a Mr. Frank B. Shannon, and I wrote his name after the number of the cabin he would occupy that night. "I've just come back from a vacation in Florida," he said. "Thought I'd stay in Palm Springs, but I'd have had to mortgage my home, sell my car, and take all my money out of the bank, just to stay there one week." His tone wasn't particularly bitter, but, for the sake of making conversation, I remarked, "You don't seem to care much for Palm Springs, Mr. Shannon." He laughed, and replied, "Well, I am rather tired of the place. I was mayor there for seventeen years!" CHAPTER ELEVEN PEOPLE WHO MANAGE motels shouldn't throw stones, for they live in glass houses just as surely as does any goldfish. In fact, a goldfish in a bowl placed in the center of Grand Central Station would live a life of privacy and seclusion, compared to the life of a motel owner.