“Mrs. Blake has had great advantages. She might almost be one of our own products, were it not for the fact that she--well--seems deliberately to wish to be Western.” He found himself growing more and more confused under the steady regard of those limpid shadowy eyes--set like the eyes of a goddess in marble, and so disconcertingly shallow. He pulled himself up sharply. “Now, if I may begin--you must not sign your notes, ‘Mrs. Gregory Verrooy Compton’----” Ida’s eyes flashed wide open. “Why not, I’d like to know? Isn’t it as good a name as yours?” “What has that to do with it? Ah--yes--you don’t quite understand. It is not the custom--in what we call society--to sign in that manner--it is a regrettable American provincialism. If you really wish to learn----” “Fire away,” said Ida sullenly. “Sign your own name--may I ask what it is?” “My name was Ida Maria Hook before I married.” “Ida is a beautiful and classic name. We will eliminate the rest. Sign yourself Ida Compton--or if you wish to be more swagger, Ida Verrooy Compton----” “Land’s sake! We’d be laughed clean out of Montana.” “Yes, there is a fine primitive simplicity about many things in this region,” replied Mr. Whalen, thinking of his spats and silk hat. “But you get my point?” “I get you.” “Oh!--We’ll have a little talk later about slang. And you mustn’t begin your letters, particularly to an acquaintance, ‘Dear friend.’ This is an idealistic and--ah--bucolic custom, but hardly good form.” He was deeply annoyed at his lack of fluency, but Ida once more was deliberately “upsetting” him. She smiled indulgently. “I guess I like your new-fangled notions. I’ll write all that down while you’re thinkin’ up what to say next.” She leaned over the table and wrote slowly that he might have leisure to admire her figure in profile. But he gazed sternly out of the window until she swayed back to the perpendicular and demanded, “What next? Do you want me to say băth and căn’t?” “Oh, no, I really shouldn’t advise it, not in Butte. I don’t wish to teach you anything that will add to the discomforts of life--so long as your lines are cast here. Just modify the lamentably short American _a_ a bit.” And he rehearsed her for a few moments. “Fine. I’ll try it on Greg--Mr. Compton. If he laughs I’ll know I’m too good, but if he only puckers his eyebrows and looks as if somethin’ queer was floatin’ round just out of sight, then I’ll know I’ve struck the happy medium. I’ll be a real high-brow in less than no time.” “You certainly are surprisingly quick,” said Professor Whalen handsomely. “In a year I could equip you for our centres of culture, but as I remarked just now it would not be kind to transform you into an exotic. Now, suppose we read a few pages of this grammar----”