"Wall, Mr. Barkman," she retorted, with a smiling glance at the lawyer,
"I guess I must give in; if Mr. Bancroft thinks I ought ter, there's no
more to be said. I'm willin'."

An evening or two later, Barkman having gone into Wichita, Bancroft
asked Loo to go out with him upon the stoop. For several minutes he
stood in silence admiring the moonlit landscape; then he spoke as if to
himself:

"Not a cloud in the purple depths, no breath of air, no sound nor stir
of life--peace absolute that mocks at man's cares and restlessness.
Look, Loo, how the ivory light bathes the prairie and shimmers on the
sea of corn, and makes of the little creek a ribband of silver....

"Yet you seem to prefer a great diamond gleaming in a white shirt-front,
and a coarse, common face, and vulgar talk.

"You," and he turned to her, "whose beauty is like the beauty of nature
itself, perfect and ineffable. When I think of you and that coarse brute
together, I shall always remember this moonlight and the hateful zig-
zagging snake-fence there that disfigures and defiles its beauty."

The girl looked up at him, only half understanding his rhapsody, but
glowing with the hope called to life by his extravagant praise of her.
"Why, George," she said shyly, because wholly won, "I don't think no
more of Lawyer Barkman than the moon thinks of the fence--an' I guess
that's not much," she added, with a little laugh of complete content.

The common phrases of uneducated speech and the vulgar accent of what he