ut even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited,
and handed my mother a letter. Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father
her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us
was a fortune. Some one back East "awaited his instructions." Followed
many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt
Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted
that her "personal belongings" be shipped to Wisconsin.

After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode
thirty-six miles in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads ("the
giant's vertebrae," Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express
station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases. It was a solemn
moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of
delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases
with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade
quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one
white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.

What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever
equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's "personal
belongings."

I was in a seventh heaven of delight. My father picked up the books
and began to read, paying no attention to our ecstasies over dresses and
ribbons, the boxful of laces, or the little shell-covered case holding a
few ornaments in gold and silver and jet.

We women did not stop until we had explored every corner of that trunk
and the two packing boxes. Then I picked up a napkin.

"What are these for?" I asked curiously.

My father slammed his book shut. I had never seen such a look on his
face.

"How old are you, Mary?" he demanded suddenly.

I told him that I was going on fifteen.

"And you never saw a table napkin?"

His tone was bitter and accusing. I did n't understand--how could I?
Father began to talk, his words growing more and more bitter. Mother
defended herself hotly. To-day I know that justice was on her side.
But in that first adolescent self-consciousness my sympathies were all
with father. Mother had neglected us--she had not taught us to use
table napkins! Becky Sharp used them. People in history used them.
I felt sure that Great-Aunt Martha would have been horrified, even in
heaven, to learn I had never even seen a table napkin.

Our parents