, and they
knew how things should be, to be right. Many of the others were from
Kentucky and Virginia, and they were well dressed, proud, handsome
women; none better looking anywhere. They followed the fashions and
spent much time and money on their clothes. When it was Quarterly
Meeting or the Bishop dedicated the church or they went to town on
court days, you should have seen them--until Pryors came. Then
something new happened, and not a woman in our neighbourhood liked it.
Pamela Pryor didn't follow the fashions. She set them. If every other
woman made long tight sleeves to their wrists, she let hers flow to the
elbow and filled them with silk lining, ruffled with lace. If they
wore high neckbands, she had none, and used a flat lace collar. If
they cut their waists straight around and gathered their skirts on six
yards full, she ran hers down to a little point front and back, that
made her look slenderer, and put only half as much goods in her skirt.
Maybe Laddie rode as well as she could; he couldn't manage a horse any
better, and aside from him there wasn't a man we knew who would have
tried to ride some of the animals she did.

If she ever worked a stroke, no one knew it. All day long she sat in
the parlour, the very best one, every day; or on benches under the
trees with embroidery frames or books, some of them fearful, big,
difficult looking ones, or rode over the country. She rode in sunshine
and she rode in storm, until you would think she couldn't see her way
through her tangled black hair. She rode through snow and in pouring
rain, when she could have stayed out of it, if she had wanted to. She
didn't seem to be afraid of anything on earth or in Heaven. Every one
thought she was like her father and didn't believe there was any God;
so when she came among us at church or any public gathering, as she
sometimes did, people were in no hurry to be friendly, while she looked
straight ahead and never spoke until she was spoken to, and then she
was precise and cold, I tell you.

Men took off their hats, got out of the road when she came pounding
along, and stared after her like "be-addled mummies," my mother said.
But that was all she, or any one else, could say. The young fellows
were wild about her, and if they tried to sidle up to her in the hope
that they might lead her horse or get to hold her foot when she
mounted, they always saw when they reached her, that she wasn't there.

But she was her