The car crossed the Roaring Fork and drew up before two small shacks, one of which bore a faded sign, “The Wetherford House,” and the other in fresher paint, “The Wetherford Café.” On the sidewalk a group of Indians were sitting, and a half-dozen slouching white men stood waiting at the door.
At sight of her mother’s hotel Virginia forgot every other building, every other object, and when the driver asked, respectfully, “Where will you want to get off, miss?” she did not reply, but rose unsteadily in her seat, blindly reaching for her bag and her wraps. Her slim, gray-robed figure, graceful even in her dismay, appealed to every onlooker, but Gregg was the one to offer a hand.
“Allow me, miss,” he said, with the smile of a wolf.
Declining his aid, she took her bag from the driver and walked briskly up the street as if she were a resident and knew precisely where she wanted to go. “One o’ those Eastern tourists, I reckon?” she heard the old woman say.
As she went past the hotel-porch her heart beat hard and her breath shortened. In a flash she divined the truth. She understood why her mother had discouraged her coming home. It was not merely on account of the money—it was because she knew that her business was wrong.
What a squalid little den it was! How cheap, bald, and petty the whole town seemed of a sudden. Lee Virginia halted and turned. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to make herself known. She retraced her steps, pulled open the broken screen door, and entered the café. It was a low, dingy dining-room filled with the odor of ham and bad coffee. At the tables ten or fifteen men, a motley throng, were busily feeding their voracious jaws, and on her left, behind a showcase filled with cigars, stood her mother, looking old, unkempt, and worried. The changes in her were so great that the girl stood in shocked alarm. At last she raised her veil. “Mother,” she said, “don’t you know me?”
A look of surprise went over the older woman’s flabby face—a glow which brought back something of her other self, as she cried: “Why, Lee Virginny, where did you come from?”
The boarders stopped chewing and stared in absorbed interest, while Virginia kissed her blowsy mother.
“By the Lord, it’s little Virginny!” said one old fellow. “It’s her daughter.”
Upon this a mutter of astonishment arose, and the waiter-girls, giggling, marvelling, and envious, paused, their platters in hand, to exchange comment on the new-comer’s hat and gown. A cowboy at the washing-sink in the corner suspended his face-polishing and gaped over his shoulder in silent ecstasy.