Lena gave her heart
away when she felt like it, but she kept her head for her business and had
got on in the world.
Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severely of
Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the year
before. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news that
Tiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as she had allowed people to
think, but with very definite plans. One of the roving promoters that used
to stop at Mrs. Gardener's hotel owned idle property along the waterfront
in Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in business in one of his
empty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors' lodging-house. This,
everyone said, would be the end of Tiny. Even if she had begun by running
a decent place, she couldn't keep it up; all sailors' boarding-houses were
alike.
When I thought about it, I discovered that I had never known Tiny as well
as I knew the other girls. I remembered her tripping briskly about the
dining-room on her high heels, carrying a big trayful of dishes, glancing
rather pertly at the spruce travelling men, and contemptuously at the
scrubby ones--who were so afraid of her that they didn't dare to ask for
two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps the sailors, too,
might be afraid of Tiny.
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