gingerbread booths for traders that they call ‘hotels’ there,” he had remarked to some of “the boys.”  In his preoccupation with the new guest, he also became a little neglectful of his old chum and dependent, Larry Hawkins.  Nor was this the only circumstance that filled the head of that shiftless loyal retainer of the colonel with bitterness and foreboding.  Polly Swinger—­the scornfully indifferent, the contemptuously inaccessible, the coldly capricious and petulant—­was inclined to be polite to the stranger!

The fact was that Polly, after the fashion of her sex, took it into her pretty head, against all consistency and logic, suddenly to make an exception to her general attitude towards mankind in favor of one individual.  The reason-seeking masculine reader will rashly conclude that this individual was the cause as well as the object; but I am satisfied that every fair reader of these pages will instinctively know better.  Miss Polly had simply selected the new guest, Mr. Starbuck, to show others, particularly Larry Hawkins, what she could do if she were inclined to be civil.  For two days she “fixed up” her distracting hair at him so that its silken floss encircled her head like a nimbus; she tucked her oval chin into a white fichu instead of a buttonless collar; she appeared at dinner in a newly starched yellow frock!  She talked to him with “company manners;” said she would “admire to go to San Francisco,” and asked if he knew her old friends the Fauquier girls from “Faginia.”  The colonel was somewhat disturbed; he was glad that his daughter had become less negligent of her personal appearance; he could not but see, with the others, how it enhanced her graces; but he was, with the others, not entirely satisfied with her reasons.  And he could not help observing—­what was more or less patent to all—­that Starbuck was far from being equally responsive to her attentions, and at times was indifferent and almost uncivil.  Nobody seemed to be satisfied with Polly’s transformation but herself.

But eventually she was obliged to assert herself.  The third evening after Starbuck’s arrival she was going over to the cabin of Aunt Chloe, who not only did the washing for Buena Vista, but assisted Polly in dressmaking.  It was not far, and the night was moonlit.  As she crossed the garden she saw Starbuck moving in the manzanita bushes beyond; a mischievous light came into her eyes; she had not expected to meet him, but she had seen him go out, and there were always possibilities.  To her surprise, however, he merely lifted his hat as she passed, and turned abruptly in another direction.  This was more than the little heart-breaker of Buena Vista was accustomed to!

“Oh, Mr. Starbuck!” she called, in her laziest voice.

He turned almost impatiently.

“Since you’re so civil and pressing, I thought I’d tell you I was just runnin’ over to Aunt Chloe’s,” she said dryly.