akes and nibbled it while they talked. Sylvia had never been
so wholly at ease in her life. It was as though she had been launched
into the midst of an old friendship, and she felt that she had conferred
the greatest possible favor in consenting to visit this house, for was
not this dear old lady saying,--

"You see, I'm lonesome sometimes and I almost kidnap people to get them
to visit me. I'm a terribly practical old woman. If you haven't heard it
I must tell you the truth--I'm a farmer! And I don't let anybody run my
business. Other widows have to take what the lawyers give them; but
while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I'm going to handle
my own money. We women are a lot of geese, I tell you, child! I'm
treasurer of a lot of things women run, and I can see a deficit through
a brick wall as quick as any man on earth. Don't you ever let any man
vote any proxy for you--you tell 'em you'll attend the stockholders'
meetings yourself, and when you go, kick!"

Sylvia had not the faintest notion of what proxy meant, but she was sure
it must be something both interesting and important or Mrs. Owen would
not feel so strongly about it.

"When I was your age," Mrs. Owen continued, "girls weren't allowed to
learn anything but embroidery and housekeeping. But my father had some
sense. He was a Kentucky farmer and raised horses and mules. I never
knew anything about music, for I wouldn't learn; but I own a stock farm
near Lexington, and just between ourselves I don't lose any money on it.
And most that I know about men I learned from mules; there's nothing in
the world so interesting as a mule."

When Professor Kelton had declared to Sylvia on the way from the station
that Mrs. Owen was unlike any other woman in the world, Sylvia had not
thought very much about it. To be sure Sylvia's knowledge of the world
was the meagrest, but certainly she could never have imagined any woman
as remarkable as Mrs. Owen. The idea that a mule, instead of being a
dull beast of burden, had really an educational value struck her as
decidedly novel, and she did not know just what to make of it. Mrs. Owen
readjusted the pillow at her back, and went on spiritedly:--

"Your grandpa has often spoken of you, and it's mighty nice to have you
here. You see a good many of us Hoosiers are Kentucky people, and your
grandpa's father was. I remember perfectly well when your grandpa went
to the Naval Academy; and we were all mighty proud of him