picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to be
called a lady. You use a good word lightly. I have told you what it
takes to make a lady--now look at me!"

How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.

"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he said.

Mother wiped her eyes.

"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller, who
lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream. There never was a school
anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to work. Paul
Stanton took a grist there, and saw me. He married me, and brought me
here. He taught me to read and write. I learned my lessons with my
elder children. He has always kept school in our house, every night of
his life. Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite
as much for me. While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the
words he gave out. I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came
from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools,
and business. They were well educated, but they would not take the
trouble to teach their children. As I have spoken to you, my husband
taught me. All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and
places he takes me. I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him,
I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs. I
need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."

"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.

"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady--and then picture
me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians,
Gypsies, wild animals--and they used to be bad enough--why, I mind one
time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair,
and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of
bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.
By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and
gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such
a place at all. It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my
hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and
send its deadly fangs away from my baby. I did it with Paul's plane,
and neatly too! Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up
every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding
there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs. Once I was
driven to