Arline had been left well-off by her husband, who was president of the Drovers’ Trust Company, and her home was about the most refined home in Red Gap, having full bookcases and pictures of foreign Catholic churches—­though Arline is a Presbyterian—­and metal statues of antique persons, male and female, and many articles of adornment that can’t be had for the ordinary trading stamps.  She lived, of course, only for her two boys, Shelley and Keats.  Keats being an infant didn’t require much living for, but Shelley was old enough to need a lot of it.

He was eight years old when I first seen him, with long golden curls to his shoulders and lace on his velvet pants.  He came in when I was calling on his ma and acted the perfect little gentleman.  He was so quiet and grown-up he made me feel right awkward.  He had the face of a half-growed angel framed in these yellow curls, and his manners was them of Sir Galahad that he read stories about.  He was very entertaining this day.  His mother had him show me a portrait of himself and curls that had been printed in a magazine devoted to mothers and watermelon-rind pickles, and so forth, and he also brought me the new book his pastor had presented him with on his eighth birthday.

It was a lovely bound book, having a story about a sheepman that had a hundred head out on the range and lost one and left the other ninety-nine unprotected from the coyotes and went out into the brush looking for the lost one, which is about the brains of the average sheepman; but it was a pretty book, and little Shelley told me prettily all about the story, and showed me how his dear pastor had wrote in it for him.  He had wrote:  “To Shelley Vane Plunkett, who to the distinction of his name unites a noble and elevated nature.”  I wonder if Bugs Plunkett ever looks at that writing now and blushes for his lost angel face?  Anyway, I thought this day that he was the loveliest, purest child in the world, with his delicate beauty and sweet little voice and perfect manners, all set off by the golden curls.

A couple days later I was going through that same street and when I turned a corner next to the Plunkett house, here was little Shelley addressing a large red-faced man on the back of an ice wagon that had stopped there.  It was some shock to my first notions of the angel child.  I gathered with no trouble whatever that the party on the ice wagon had so far forgot his own manners as to call little Shelley a sissy.  It was a good three-to-one bet he was now sorry he spoke.  Little Shelley was using language beyond his years and words that had never been taught him by his lady mother.  He handled them words like they was his slaves.  Three or four other parties stopped to listen without seeming to.  I have heard much in my time.  I have even been forced to hear Jeff Tuttle pack a mule that preferred not to be packed.  And little Shelley was informing, even to me.  He never hesitated for a word and was quick and finished with the syllables.