The "girl room," I may say, was never opened. Mr. Smith promised it,
it is true, for the winter, and still talks of it. But somehow
there's been a sort of feeling against it. Every one in town admits
that every big hotel in the city has a "girl room" and that it must
be all right. Still, there's a certain--well, you know how sensitive
opinion is in a place like Mariposa.



TWO

The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe

It was not until the mining boom, at the time when everybody went
simply crazy over the Cobalt and Porcupine mines of the new silver
country near the Hudson Bay, that Jefferson Thorpe reached what you
might call public importance in Mariposa.

Of course everybody knew Jeff and his little barber shop that stood
just across the street from Smith's Hotel. Everybody knew him and
everybody got shaved there. From early morning, when the commercial
travellers off the 6.30 express got shaved into the resemblance of
human beings, there were always people going in and out of the barber
shop.

Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank, took his morning shave
from Jeff as a form of resuscitation, with enough wet towels laid on
his face to stew him and with Jeff moving about in the steam, razor
in hand, as grave as an operating surgeon.