I'd like to have him see--well, a certain young woman with eyelashes and--Oh, well, it wasn't Barney's fault that he'd never seen a real beauty, and so was satisfied with his particular Her.

I began to shy at Barney, and avoided him as systematically as if I owed him money; which I didn't.

I just couldn't stand for so much monologue with a girl with no eyebrows and a crooked nose for the never-failing subject.
My next unaccountable notion was manifested in an unreasoning dislike of Rankin.

He got to going to some mission-meetings, somewhere down near the Barbary Coast; I got out of him that much, and that he sometimes led the meetings.

Rankin can't lie--or won't--so he said right out that he was doing what little he could to save precious souls.