Edward thought of Milton for Our Boys now as a valuable but wronged book.
The young woman naturally did not pay much attention to what he was saying. But she came from Calistoga and was excited to meet so rare a specimen as an educated foreigner. She was, in mind, face and fashion, a typical young woman of the Wild West. She had no interest or recreation whatever, apart from flirtation. Englishmen were all nearly lords in her democratic imagination. They were therefore laughable but worth charming. She had just mislaid her last steady beau so she was at the moment a little susceptible. She had, temporarily, no special man in mind when powdering her nose to an amethyst color or corrugating her dark, dull, padded hair.
“Why, isn’t that just too bad?” she said arching her false looking eyebrows caressingly at Edward. “Well, say, listen, don’t you want to try out Napa County and Sonoma County? One of our men is crazy to have us send someone there; he says there’s a lot doing out that ways. My own home-city, Calistoga, is some cultured burg, let me tell you. My brother made fifteen dollars once in his vacation, boosting the Saturday Evening Post. Say, I go home sometimes over the week end. If you fix up to work that locality, don’t you want to call in at our place? I’d love to have you meet my Mom.”
She was planning to say to her Mom, “Say Mom, I’ve got a new steady, an English lord.”
“Are there azaleas in those parts? And does the company pay one’s fare?” asked Edward.
The young lady looked uncomfortable and paused. “Say Steve, I guess I would better put you wise on something. This firm doesn’t do much of the faith, hope and charity turn to folks in their country lines. They only come across with your trolley fare on commission—same as in Berkeley. No sales—no cash. I don’t say I get much kick out of the way they act, but there they are. But see here, my Pop’s coming down to Berkeley to gimme a ride home next Saturday in our old Dodge. Don’t you want to come along? And when we get to our place, brother’ll loan you his wheel, seeing you’re a friend of mine. I’ve got a hunch, Steve, that you’re not one of these way-up born-to-the-manner drummers. Don’t you find it hard to impress strangers? I thought so. Us up-and-coming Californians, you know, you can’t get in with us without you’ve got a lot of punch. Europeans don’t have any punch, the way I figure it. Well, we can’t all be born where we want, can we?”
Edward was pleased to have excited sympathy in one more breast. “Our hero has that indefinable something that only women’s subtler sensibilities can appreciate....”
He persisted in his fruitless missionary efforts among the mothers of North Berkeley until the following Saturday. At a given time he proceeded to a given rendezvous in Oakland to meet his patroness—whose name was Mame Weber—and her Pop and her brother Cliff.
Cheek by jowl with Miss Weber he bounced upon the back seat of Pop’s Dodge car. “Better if you’d put your arm where it oughter be,” advised Miss Weber, indicating her own ribs. “Only mind and don’t get fresh. Pop’s awful strict. Say, got any candies?”