it did not prevent a
natural womanly feeling regarding the number of years she had lived.

"You see," she continued, after a little, as Miss Lavina kept a discreet
silence, "this here gold fever is catching; and if any one gets started on
the right track, there is no telling what day he may stumble over a
fortune. One might come my way--or yours, Lavina. And, just as you say,
fine manners is a heap of help in sassiety. And thinking of it that way
makes me feel I'd like to be prepared to enjoy, in first-class style, any
amount of money I might get a chance at up here. For I tell you what it
is, Lavina, this Western land is a woman's country. Her chances in most
things are always as good, and mostly better than a man's."

"Yes, if she does not die from fright at the creepy looks of the friendly
Indians," said Miss Slocum, with a shivering breath. "I have not slept
sound for a single minute since I saw that old smoking wretch who never
seems a rod from this cabin. Now down there at Sinna Ferry I thought it
might be kind of nice, though we stopped only a little while, and I was
not up in the street. Any real genteel people there?"

"Well--yes, there is," answered Lorena Jane, after a slight hesitation as
to just how much it would be wise to say of the genteel gentleman who
resided in Sinna Ferry, and was in her eyes a model of culture and
disdainful superiority. Indeed, that disdain of his had been a first cause
in her desire to reach the state of polish he himself enjoyed--to rise
above the vulgar level of manners that had of old seemed good enough to
her. "Yes, there is some high-toned folks there; the doctor's wife and
family, for one; and then there is a very genteel man there--Captain
Leek. He is an ex-officer in the late war, you know; a real military
gentleman, with a wound in his leg. Limps some, but not enough to make him
awkward. He keeps the postoffice. But if this Government looked after its
heroes as it ought to, he'd be getting a good pension--that's just what he
would. I'm too sound a Union woman not to feel riled at times when I see
the defenders of the Constitution go unrewarded."

"Don't say 'riled,' Lorena," corrected Miss Slocum. "You must drop that
and 'dratted' and 'I'll swan'; for I don't think you could tell what any
of them mean. I couldn't, I'm sure. But I used to know a family of Leeks
back in Ohio. They were Democrats, though, and their boys joined the
Confederate Army, though I heard they was