Well,' I said, 'I have just had the boss sleep and feel so much
better. I hope you had a good nap.'

"Mrs. Lenair said, 'I have had a pleasant time lying here, though I did
not sleep any.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I could not lie that way. If I was not sleeping I would
be nervous, and want to be sitting up or moving about.'

"Then I said to her: 'I should think you must get terribly lonesome up
at your place, your son having been away so much, and you all alone with
no one to talk to.'

"She said: 'I haven't known what it was to be lonesome since I have
lived on the place.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I would not live like you do for ten dollars a day.'
She smiled, and said, 'You could not.'

"'I don't see how you can stand it,' I said, 'for it is all I can do to
keep from being lonesome here with Dan, and a team to take me anywhere.
I have more callers in a week than you have in a year. I am fond of
company and so is Dan.'

"Mrs. Lenair said: 'All you have just said, Mrs. Cullom, shows your
life, your world; we all have different worlds,' she added.

"I could hardly understand just what she meant, so I changed the subject
and thought I would talk to her about Penloe.

"'Is he home now,' I asked.

"She said, 'Yes,' he had got through his work and would be at home most
of the time.

"I said: 'Did he ever do any of the kind of work he has been doing at
the different places he worked at before he came to Orangeville? For he
don't look to me,' I said, 'as if he had worked on a ranch or done road
work much.'

"She said, 'He never had done hard work till we came to Orangeville,
having only returned to this country from India about a month before
coming here, and when we were in India, Penloe went to the University of
Calcutta as soon as he was ready to enter as a student. I lived in that
city nineteen years.'

"'Why, have you lived in India,' I said.

"Yes,' she answered. 'I left New York a year after I was married. My
husband represented a New York company in India. He died six years ago,
but we continued to reside there until Penloe finished his University
course.'

"I was clean taken back by what she said. I said, 'It's none of my
business, Mrs. Lenair, but I don't see why a fine looking young man like
Penloe, with the education you say he has had, don't get light, pleasant
work, if he has to work out, instead of working at such hard places with
the toughest crowds of men.'

"All she said was: 'That is his work.'

"