In Flight Again

The store was a maze of wonder to the girl from the mountains--so many
bright, bewildering things, ribbons and tin pans, glassware and toys,
cheap jewelry and candies. She looked about with the dazed eyes of a
creature from another world.

But the manager looked upon her with eyes of favor. He saw that her eyes
were bright and keen. He was used to judging faces. He saw that she was as
yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the
girls who applied to him for positions. And he was not beyond a friendly
flirtation with a pretty new girl himself; so she was engaged at once, and
put on duty at the notion-counter.

The girls flocked around her during the intervals of custom. Lizzie had
told of her cousin's long ride, embellished, wherever her knowledge
failed, by her extremely wild notions of Western life. She had told how
Elizabeth arrived wearing a belt with two pistols, and this gave Elizabeth
standing at once among all the people in the store. A girl who could
shoot, and who wore pistols in a belt like a real cowboy, had a social
distinction all her own.

The novel-reading, theatre-going girls rallied around her to a girl; and
the young men in the store were not far behind. Elizabeth was popular from
the first. Moreover, as she settled down into the routine of life, and
had three meals every day, her cheeks began to round out just a little;
and it became apparent that she was unusually beautiful in spite of her
dark skin, which whitened gradually under the electric light and
high-pressure life of the store.