immigration pamphlets, she languidly
acknowledged that it was rather ducky, whatever that may mean, and
asked Dinky-Dunk if there'd be any deer-shooting this spring. I
notice, by the way, that she calls him "Dooncan" and sometimes "Cousin
Doonk," which strikes me as being over-intimate, seeing he's really
her second cousin. It seems suggestive of some hidden joke between
them. And Duncan addresses her quite openly as "Allie."

This same Allie has brought a lady's maid with her whom she addresses,
_more Anglico_, simply by her surname of "Struthers." Struthers is a
submerged and self-obliterating and patient-eyed woman of nearly
forty, I should say, with a face that would be both intelligent and
attractive, if it weren't so subservient. But I've a floaty sort of
feeling that this same maid knows a little more than she lets on to
know, and I'm wondering what western life will do to her. In one
year's time, I'll wager a plugged nickel against an English sovereign,
she'll not be sedately and patiently dining at second-table and
murmuring "Yes, me Lady" in that meek and obedient manner. But it
fairly took my breath, the adroit and expeditious manner in which
Struthers had that welter of luggage unstrapped and unbuckled and
warped into place and things stowed away, even down to her ladyship's
rather ridiculous folding canvas bathtub. In little more than two
shakes she had a shimmering litter of toilet things out on the dresser
tops, and even a nickel alcohol-lamp set up for brewing the apparently
essential cup of tea. It made me wish that I had a Struthers or two of
my own on the string. And that made my thoughts go hurtling back to my
old Hortense and how we had parted at the Hotel de L'Athenee, and to
Theobald Gustav and his aunt the Baroness, and the old lost life that
seemed such years and years away....

But I promptly put the lid down on those over-disturbing reminiscences.
There should be no _post-mortems_ in this family circle, no jeremiads
over what has gone before. This is the New World and the new age where
life is too crowded for regrets. I am a woman twenty-seven years old,
married and the mother of three children. I am the wife of a rancher
who went bust in a land-boom and is compelled to start life over again.
I must stand beside him, and start from the bottom. I must also carry
along with me all the hopes and prospects of three small lives. This,
however, is something which I refuse to accept as a burden and