"Your guests wanted to see Luella and hear her talk," he reminded her with gentle raillery. "You told them how she would go up to baby Mary and smooth down the baby's dress with her beak, and make kissing sounds, and say, "She looks like you, Bill. Damned if she don't." I heard you telling them. She's heard Don say that, every time he comes here. Your _guests_ begged to have her brought in----" "Yes, and what did she _do_?" Doris was almost in tears; but ladies with carefully powdered cheeks cannot afford tears, so Doris pressed a twenty-five-dollar handkerchief to her lips and controlled herself. "I'll tell you what she did! I brought the baby and held her down for the parrot to talk to. And what did she _say_? 'What the hell! You damned huzzy, git outa here!' _That's_ what she said, to _your own baby_! Now those women will go home and say that's the way you talk to your family." Bill's chuckle did not soothe her appreciably. She stood looking at him as if she wanted to box his ears. Bill in cream colored Palm Beach coat and trousers, soft silk shirt, white canvas shoes, was the handsomest man in Parowan,--or in all Esmeralda County, for that matter. The women guests of Doris recognized that fact, if Doris herself overlooked it. Wherefore, when he yielded the point and returned to the midst of the assembly, he saw eyes that brightened as he looked into them, lips that smiled, a subdued little flutter at his coming. In the wide arch that Bill had designed to give Doris the long "vista" which she so admired in other houses, Luella was pigeon-toeing back and forth, her tail spread slightly, her eyes swift-flashing bits of amber. She was peeved at something, in Bill's opinion. She paused and tilted her head at him. "Look who's here! Well, I'll be damned!" Ladies laughed titteringly behind their fingers, and looked at one another. Bill, feeling himself an elephant at a doll's tea-party, stooped and let Luella step upon his hand. "Hell of a note! I just can't _stand_ this place! Not a soul worth knowing. Ignorant----" Bill mercifully squelched her with his hand pressing down her head hard. He bit his lip, trying hard not to laugh right out in meeting, and turned to make a dignified retreat of it, when a pair of human-looking eyes in the crowd met his, and one lid drooped a bit. Bill stopped short, took the second look to make sure, and turned toward the wives and daughters of Parowan's leading citizens. He grinned,--the old, Bill Dale smile in the face of discouragement, the smile and the twinkle that had gone far to win him his nickname of Hopeful Bill.