dden. About as conspicuous, yu' may say, as when
Old Faithful Geyser lets loose. Yu' see, one batch o' tourists pulls
out right after breakfast for Norris Basin, leavin' things empty and
yawnin'. By noon the whole hotel outfit has been slumberin' in its
chairs steady for three hours. Maybe yu' might hear a fly buzz, but
maybe not. Everything's liable to be restin', barrin' the kid. He's
a-watchin' out. Then he sees the dust, and he says 'Stage!' and it
touches the folks off like a hot pokeh. The Syndicate manager he lopes
to a lookin'glass, and then organizes himself behind the book; and the
young photograph chap bounces out o' his private door like one o' them
cuckoo clocks; and the fossil man claws his specimens and curiosities
into shape, and the porters line up same as parade, and away goes the
piano and fiddles up-stairs. It is mighty conspicuous. So Hank he come
rennin' out from somewheres too, and the stage drives up.

"Then out gets a tall woman, and I noticed her yello' hair. She was
kind o' dumb-eyed, yet fine to see. I reckon Hank noticed her too, right
away. And right away her trouble begins. For she was a lady's maid, and
her lady was out of the stage and roundin' her up quick. And it's
'Where have you put the keys, Willomene?' The lady was rich and stinkin'
lookin', and had come from New Yawk in her husband's private cyar.

"Well, Willomene fussed around in her pockets, and them keys was not
there. So she started explaining in tanglefoot English to her lady how
her lady must have took them from her before leavin' the cyar. But the
lady seemed to relish hustlin' herself into a rage. She got tolerable
conspicuous, too. And after a heap o' words, 'You are discharged,' she
says; and off she struts. Soon her husband came out to Willomene, still
standin' like statuary, and he pays her a good sum of cash, and he goes
away, and she keeps a standing yet for a spell. Then all of a sudden
she says something I reckon was 'O, Jesus,' and sits down and starts a
cryin'.

"I would like to have given her comfort. But we all stood around on the
hotel poach, and the right thing would not come into my haid. Then the
baggage-wagon came in from Cinnabar, and they had picked the keys up on
the road between Cinnabar and Gardner. So the lady and her toilet was
rescued, but that did no good to Willomene. They stood her trunk down
along with the rest--a brass-nailed little old concern--and there was
Willomene out of a job and afoo