nous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but
unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at
times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some
conversation she had held with another.

She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband
had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.
The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been
obliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls and
a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at
Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared,
too shiftless--to do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor;
she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans,
where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand country
life. Of course she had been married too young--as all girls were.
Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where
she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could
advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far
enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia,
was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.

As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine
American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved.
But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his
main object, and, looking up cautiously, said:--

"And mebbe write po'try now and then?" To his great discomfiture, the
only effect of this suggestion was to check his companion's speech for
some moments and apparently throw her back into her former abstraction.
Yet, after a long pause, as they were turning into the lane, she said,
as if continuing the subject:--

"I only hope that, whatever my daughters may do, they won't marry
young."

The yawning breaches in the Delatour gates and fences presently came
in view. They were supposed to be reinforced by half a dozen dogs,
who, however, did their duty with what would seem to be the prevailing
inefficiency, retiring after a single perfunctory yelp to shameless
stretching, scratching, and slumber. Their places were taken on the
veranda by two negro servants, two girls respectively of eight and
eleven, and a boy of fourteen, who remained silently staring. As Mr.
Bowers had accepted the widow's