“Angus again snorted in a common way.  ‘St. John Hammersmith!’ says he, steaming up, ’When he trammed ore for three-fifty a day and went to bed with his clothes on any night he’d the price of a quart of gin-and-beer mixed—­liking to get his quick—­his name was naked ‘John’ with never a Saint to it, which his widow tacked on a dozen years later.  And speaking of names, Mrs. McDonald, I sorely regret you didn’t name your own son after your first willful fancy.  It was no good day for his father when you put my own name to him.’

“But Ellabelle paid no attention whatever to this rough stuff, being already engaged in courting the Hammersmith dame for the good of her social importance.  I make no doubt before the maid finished rubbing in the complexion cream that night she had reduced this upstart to the ranks and stepped into her place as leader of the most exclusive social set between South San Francisco and old Henry Miller’s ranch house at Gilroy.  Anyway, she kept talking to herself about it, almost over the mangled remains of her own son, as you might say.

“A year later the new mansion was done, setting in the centre of sixty acres of well-manicured land as flat as a floor and naturally called Hillcrest.  Angus asked me down for another visit.  There had been grand doings to open the new house, and Ellabelle felt she was on the way to ruling things social with an iron hand if she was just careful and didn’t overbet her cards.  Angus, not being ashamed of his scandalous past, was really all that kept her nerves strung up.  It seems he’d give her trouble while the painters and decorators was at work, hanging round ’em fascinated and telling ’em how he’d had to work ten hours a day in his time and how he could grain a door till it looked exactly like the natural wood, so they’d say it wasn’t painted at all.  And one day he become so inflamed with evil desire that Ellabelle, escorting a bunch of the real triple-platers through the mansion, found him with his coat off learning how to rub down a hardwood panel with oil and pumice stone.  Gee!  Wouldn’t I like to of been there!  I suppose I got a lower nature as well as the rest of us.

“After I’d been there a few days, along comes Angus, fills, out into the world from college to make a name for himself.  By ingenuity or native brute force he had contrived to graduate.  He was nice as ever and told me he was going to look about a bit until he could decide what his field of endeavour should be.  Apparently it was breaking his neck in outdoor sports, including loop-the-loop in his new car on roads not meant for it, and delighting Ellabelle because he was a fine social drag in her favour, and enraging his father by the same reasons.  Ellabelle was especially thrilled by his making up to a girl that was daughter to this here old train-robber I mentioned.  It was looking like he might form an alliance, as they say, with this old family which had lived quite a decent life since they actually