of the backwoods--been there all my life," said
Hiram lamely.

Lucy's eyes grew dreamy. "I thought the same," she said pensively at
last. "I was born there in Temple Valley. I was content, too, till I
was about twenty; then I got to mixing with the summer boarders that
came to the Mills place for the trout season. They'd have something on
every night, and I got acquainted and was always invited. I got to
wanting to go to the city, and I hated Temple Valley.

"Then my folks died. I didn't get along the best in the world with
Emma--that's by [Transcribers' note: my?] brother's wife. So I pulled
out the day after my twentieth birthday and came to Frisco--and I've
been here ever since. But there was another reason why I left."

She sighed and leaned back.

"You've heard of Mrs. Cummings, the writer, haven't you? She was up
at Mills' place one summer, and I got acquainted with her. I told her
I'd always had the writing bug, and she encouraged me. I had no
education but what I'd got in the Temple district school, but I'd read
a lot.

"So I wanted to write, and finally I left and came to Frisco, and I had
an awful time. Finally I got a job in a cheap restaurant and had to
wait table, and when I got the cashier's job last night I got out of
the rut for the first time in three years. I quit two or three times,
thinking I could make a living writing scenarios, but I always had to
go back to the beaneries.

"I'm going to hold down the restaurant job till things come my way.
I've given up the idea that I'm a genius. My clothes cost a lot.
Things will break for me some day. Maybe I'll get in the pictures. I
want to go to Los Angeles and try, when I can save a little jack. I
left the woods to win out, and I'm going to do it by fair means or
foul. I'm ambitious. I'm determined to be rich some day."

Hiram drank in her chatter for two hours more, and when they returned
to her rooming house he paid the driver of the car thirteen dollars and
fifty cents, and now had only fifteen-fifty to his name. He was
horrified at the prospects, but blissfully conscious that he had given
Lucy Dalles an afternoon of pleasure.

"I want to show you my room," she said, as the car departed. "Come in.
Don't make any noise going upstairs."

She led the way in, and he followed her softly. She opened a door on
the second floor and stood back for him to look.

"I furnished my own room," she said proudly. "It's all mine, and