t
and slightly shook the red dust from her skirts as she continued her
explanation, in the same deep voice, with a certain monotony of logic
and possibly of purpose and practice also.

"You and mother know as well as I do, father, that Stephen is no more to
be depended upon than the wind that blows. It's three years since he has
been promising to come, and even getting money to come, and yet he has
never showed his face, though he has been a dozen times within five
miles of this house. He doesn't come because he doesn't want to come. As
to YOUR going over to the stage-office, I went there myself at the last
moment to save you the mortification of asking questions of strangers
that they know have been a dozen times answered already."

There was such a ring of absolute truthfulness, albeit worn by
repetition, in the young girl's deep honest voice that for one instant
her two more emotional relatives quailed before it; but only for a
moment.

"That's right!" shrilled the old woman. "Go on and abuse your own
brother. It's only the fear you have that he'll make his fortune yet and
shame you before the father and mother you despise."

The young girl remained standing by the window, motionless and
apparently passive, as if receiving an accepted and usual punishment.
But here the elder woman gave way to sobs and some incoherent snuffling,
at which the younger went away. Whether she recognized in her mother's
tears the ordinary deliquescence of emotion, or whether, as a woman
herself, she knew that this mere feminine conventionality could not
possibly be directed at her, and that the actual conflict between them
had ceased, she passed slowly on to an inner hall, leaving the male
victim, her unfortunate father, to succumb, as he always did sooner or
later, to their influence. Crossing the hall, which was decorated with a
few elk horns, Indian trophies, and mountain pelts, she entered another
room, and closed the door behind her with a gesture of relief.

The room, which looked upon a porch, presented a singular combination of
masculine business occupations and feminine taste and adornment. A desk
covered with papers, a shelf displaying a ledger and account-books,
another containing works of reference, a table with a vase of flowers
and a lady's riding-whip upon it, a map of California flanked on either
side by an embroidered silken workbag and an oval mirror decked with
grasses, a calendar and interest-table hanging below tw