And if he found himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much.

Yet to Annie he said: "Such rot! there isn't a grain of intelligence in it.

Nobody with more gumption than a grasshopper could go and sit and listen." And to Miriam he said, with much scorn of Annie and the others: "I suppose they're at the 'Coons'." It was queer to see Miriam singing coon songs.

She had a straight chin that went in a perpendicular line from the lower lip to the turn.

She always reminded Paul of some sad Botticelli angel when she sang, even when it was: "Come down lover's lane For a walk with me, talk with me." Only when he sketched, or at evening when the others were at the "Coons", she had him to herself.