nto her own, for parties
seemed to recognize her true worth at once. Some of them indeed she
could buffalo right on the spot, for she hadn't lived in Europe and such
places all them years for nothing. So, camping in a miserable rented
shack that never cost a penny over seventy thousand dollars, with only
thirty-eight rooms and no proper space for the servants, they set to
work building their present marble palace--there's inside and outside
pictures of it in a magazine somewhere round here--bigger than the state
insane asylum and very tasty and expensive, with hand-painted ceilings
and pergolas and cafes and hot and cold water and everything.

"It was then I first see Ellabelle after all the years, and I want to
tell you she was impressive. She looked like the descendant of a long
line of ancestry or something and she spoke as good as any reciter you
ever heard in a hall. Last time I had seen her she was still forgetting
about the r's--she'd say: 'Oh, there-urr you ah!' thus showing she was
at least half Iowa in breed--but nothing like that now. She could give
the English cards and spades and beat them at their own game. Her face
looked a little bit overmassaged and she was having trouble keeping her
hips down, and wore a patent chin-squeezer nights, and her hair couldn't
be trusted to itself long at a time; but she knew how to dress and she'd
learned decency in the use of the diamond except when it was really
proper to break out all over with 'em. You'd look at her twice in any
show ring. Ain't women the wonders! Gazing at Ellabelle when she had
everything on, you'd never dream that she'd come up from the vilest
dregs only a few years before--helping cook for the harvest hands in
Iowa, feeding Union Pacific passengers at twenty-two a month, or
splitting her own kindling at Wallace, Idaho, and dreaming about a new
silk dress for next year, or mebbe the year after if things went well.

"Men ain't that way. Angus had took no care of his figure, which was now
pouchy, his hair was gray, and he was either shedding or had been
reached, and he had lines of care and food in his face, and took no
pains whatever with his accent--or with what he said, for that matter. I
never saw a man yet that could hide a disgraceful past like a woman can.
They don't seem to have any pride. Most of 'em act like they don't care
a hoot whether people find it out on 'em or not.

"Angus was always reckless that way, adding to his wife's burden of