afternoon and people were just clutching for them. Then at night
there was a big oyster supper in Smith's caff, with speeches, and the
Mariposa band outside.

And the queer thing was that the very next afternoon was the funeral
of young Fizzlechip, and Dean Drone had to change the whole text of
his Sunday sermon at two days' notice for fear of offending public
sentiment.

But I think what Jeff liked best of it all was the sort of public
recognition that it meant. He'd stand there in the shop, hardly
bothering to shave, and explain to the men in the arm-chairs how he
held her, and they shoved her, and he clung to her, and what he'd
said to himself--a perfect Iliad--while he was clinging to her.

The whole thing was in the city papers a few days after with a
photograph of Jeff, taken specially at Ed Moore's studio (upstairs
over Netley's). It showed Jeff sitting among palm trees, as all
mining men do, with one hand on his knee, and a dog, one of those
regular mining dogs, at his feet, and a look of piercing intelligence
in his face that would easily account for forty thousand dollars.

I say that the recognition meant a lot to Jeff for its own sake. But
no doubt the fortune meant quite a bit to him too on account of Myra.

Did I mention Myra, Jeff's daughter? Perhaps not. That's the trouble
with the people in Mariposa; they're all so separate and so
different--not a bit like the people in the cities--that unless you
hear about them separately and one by one you can't for a moment
understand what they're like.