inate and often hard to move.

She went to join Gertrude, while Muriel, sitting alone where she had been
left, laid down her book, and let her eyes range slowly round the room,
trying to analyze the impression it made on her. There was no carpet on
the floor; the walls were made of mill-dressed boards which had cracked
with the dryness and smelt of turpentine. The furniture consisted of a
few bent-hardwood chairs and a rickety table covered with a gaudy cloth.
The nickeled lamp, which diffused an unpleasant odor, was of florid but
very inartistic design; the plain stove stood in an ugly iron tray, and
its galvanized pipe ran up, unconcealed, to the ceiling. A black
distillate had trickled down from a bend in it, and stained the floor.

Muriel realized that had she been expected to live in such a place in
England it would have struck her as comfortless, and almost squalid; but
now, perhaps by contrast with the frozen desolation without, it looked
cheerful, and had a homelike air. This, she thought, was significant, and
she followed up the train of ideas to which it led. She had a practical,
independent bent; she liked to handle and investigate things for herself,
to get into close and intimate touch with life. At home, this had not
often been possible; she was too sheltered and, in a sense, too secluded.
The people she met were conventional, acting in accordance with a
recognized code, concealing their feelings. If she rode or drove,
somebody got ready the horse for her; it was the same with the car. When
she strolled through an English garden, she might pluck a flower or take
pleasure in the smoothness of the lawn, but it was always with the
feeling that others had planted and mown. She could take no active part
in things; there was little that she could really do.

It was different on the Western prairie. Here men and women showed anger
or sorrow or gladness more or less openly. One could realize their
emotions, and this, instead of deterring, attracted her; one came to
close grips with the primitive influences of human nature. Then they were
strenuous people, toiling stubbornly, rejoicing in tangible results that
their hands and brains had produced. Woman was man's real helpmate, not a
companion for his idle hours. She kept his house, and in time of pressure
drove his horses; she had her say in determining the count of the cattle
and the bushels of seed, and it was sometimes conceded that her judgment
was the better.