She had refused him as gently as possible--a big,
awkward, good-natured, ignorant boy he was, with
the eyes of a St. Bernard dog. He apologized for his
presumption and never repeated the offense.

Somehow her conquests had all been in this class.

The tall, blushing German youth from the butcher's
around the corner had been slipping extra cuts into her
bundle and making awkward advances until she caught him
red-handed with a pound of lamb chops which he failed
to explain. She read him a lecture on honesty that
discouraged him. It was not so much what she said, as
the way she said it, that wounded his sensitive nature.

The ice man she had not yet entirely subdued. Tony
Bonelli had the advantage of pretending not to
understand her orders of dismissal. He merely smiled
in his sad Italian way and continued to pack her ice-
box so full the lid would never close.

She was reminded at every turn tonight of these
futile conquests of the impossible. They all smelled
of the back stairs and the kitchen. Her people had
been slaveholders in the old regime of southern
Kentucky. A kindly tolerant contempt for the
pretensions of a servant class was bred in the bone of
her being.