"He was a gambler."

Billy's face abruptly stiffened, and she could see his eyes
cloudy with doubt in the quick glance he flung at her.

"Oh, it was all right," she laughed. "I was only eight years old.
You see, I'm beginning at the beginning. It was after my mother
died and when I was adopted by Cady. He kept a hotel and saloon.
It was down in Los Angeles. Just a small hotel. Workingmen, just
common laborers, mostly, and some railroad men, stopped at it,
and I guess Al Stanley got his share of their wages. He was so
handsome and so quiet and soft-spoken. And he had the nicest eyes
and the softest, cleanest hands. I can see them now. He played
with me sometimes, in the afternoon, and gave me candy and little
presents. He used to sleep most of the day. I didn't know why,
then. I thought he was a fairy prince in disguise. And then he
got killed, right in the bar-room, but first he killed the man
that killed him. So that was the end of that love affair.

"Next was after the asylum, when I was thirteen and living with
my brother--I've lived with him ever since. He was a boy that
drove a bakery wagon. Almost every morning, on the way to school,
I used to pass him. He would come driving down Wood Street and
turn in on Twelfth. Maybe it was because he drove a horse that
attracted me. Anyway, I must have loved him for a couple of
months. Then he lost his job, or something, for another boy drove
the wagon. And we'd never even spoken to each other.

"Then there was a bookkeeper when I was sixteen. I seem to run to