Quite plainly she was taking her first long journey.
"Do I have to order everything that is here?" she presently asked shyly
after a tentative and furtive glance at her table companion.
Clay felt no inclination to smile at her naivete. He was not very much
more experienced than she was in such things, but his ignorance of
forms never embarrassed him. They were details that seemed to him to
have no importance.
The cowpuncher helped her fill the order card. She put herself
entirely in his hands and was willing to eat whatever he suggested
unbiased by preferences of her own. He included chicken salad and ice
cream. From the justice she did her lunch he concluded that his choice
had been a wise one.
She was a round, soft, little person with constant intimations of a
childhood not long outgrown. Dimples ran in and out her pink cheeks at
the slightest excuse. The blue eyes were innocently wide and the
Cupid's-bow mouth invitingly sweet. The girl from Brush, Colorado, was
about as worldly-wise as a plump, cooing infant or a fluffy kitten, and
instinctively the eye caressed her with the same tenderness.
During the course of lunch she confided that her name was Kitty Mason,
that she was an orphan, and that she was on her way to New York to
study at a school for moving-picture actresses.
"I sent my photograph and the manager wrote back that my face was one
hundred per cent perfect for the movies," the girl explained.
It was clear that she was expecting to be manufactured into a film star
in a week or two.
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