ving the boss a jawing about throwing his
old broken harness on her bedroom floor, when he came home in the light
rig this afternoon.' 'He is always doing such things,' said George. 'The
front room is more like an old store-room than anything else. He don't
deserve a house; that man ought to live in a barn.'

"Another of the men said: 'If ever there was any attraction between the
boss and his wife, it has long ago disappeared; and the children! What a
quarreling gang they are.' Then they proceeded to discuss at length each
member of the family, and I must say, father, that although I had become
accustomed to much of the roughness of the life of these ranches, I was
so shocked over some of the things they said that it took me a long time
to get over it. I was not surprised that the boys should be little
reprobates, because I didn't see how they could be otherwise, living
with such a crew of men around them all the time, but was shocked to
hear what they said about the girls. There were two of them: one fifteen
years old, the other eighteen. Rather pretty girls they were, too. I had
talked with them several times and they seemed modest and quite shy with
me. I hadn't seen them much with the other fellows. Well, father, when
those men had finished talking, they hadn't left those girls a shred of
what the world calls a reputation, and the worst of it was that their
stories were for the most part true, as I afterward ascertained. I could
scarcely speak to the girls for several days; for somehow one expects
more of a girl than of a boy, though I don't know why one should," he
added, thoughtfully. "I'm sure I'd want to be as pure as the girl I
married.

"Well, I studied over the thing a good deal, and I finally came to this
conclusion: Those girls were not bad; they were simply curious. They led
such narrow, cramped lives that there was nothing for their active
brains to feed on, so they naturally turned to the most interesting
thing at hand, themselves, their physical selves. A superabundance of
vitality overshadowed their small mental equipment. In the absence of
suitable entertainment the physical part of their being had fatally
asserted itself. Ignorant of consequences, they sinned innocently. I
felt sorry for them, and during the rest of my stay there, I tried to
give them some glimpses of a more intellectual life.

"Well," continued Charles, "I stayed in that hell over a year, then left
and went to the Lonsdale ranch.