The dining-room of the Palace Hotel was a large, airy apartment, rustling
with artistically perforated and slashed pink paper that hung everywhere,
at this season of the year, to lend festal effect as well as to palliate
the scourge of flies. There were six or seven large tables, all vacant
except that at which Columbus Landis, the landlord, sat with his guests,
while his wife and children ate in the kitchen by their own preference.
Transient trade was light in Plattville; nobody ever came there, except
occasional commercial travellers who got out of town the instant it was
possible, and who said awful things if, by the exigencies of the railway
time-table, they were left over night.

Behind the host's chair stood a red-haired girl in a blue cotton gown; and
in her hand she languidly waved a long instrument made of clustered strips
of green and white and yellow tissue paper fastened to a wooden wand;
with this she amiably amused the flies except at such times as the
conversation proved too interesting, when she was apt to rest it on the
shoulder of one of the guests. This happened each time the editor of the
"Herald" joined in the talk. As the men seated themselves they all nodded
to her and said, "G'd evening, Cynthy." Harkless always called her
Charmion; no one knew why. When he came in she moved around the table to a
chair directly opposite him, and held that station throughout the meal,
with her eyes fixed on his face. Mr. Martin noted this manoeuvre--it
occurred regularly twice a day--with a stealthy smile at the girl, and her
light skin flushed while her lip curled shrewishly at the old gentleman.
"Oh, all right, Cynthy," he whispered to her, and chuckled aloud at her
angry toss of the head.

"Schofields' seemed to be kind of put out with me this evening," he
remarked, addressing himself to the company. "He's the most ungratefullest