No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett or her costume.  Like the bee, the ant, and other wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to be disposed of with a glance.  And yet there was no attempt at subtlety on her part; on the contrary, no one could have an appearance of greater candor than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had come West to teach.  Her costume was a thing apart, suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor personal vanity, but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate individualism; an excessively short skirt, so innocent of “fit” or “hang” in its wavering, indeterminate outline as to suggest the possible workmanship of teeth rather than of scissors; and riding-boots coming well to the knee, displaying a well-shaped, ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their chiefest vanity.  But Mrs. Yellett was not wholly mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots she wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used to be known as a “basque.”  It fitted her ample form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row of jet buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath might cause them to shoot into space at any moment with the force of Mauser bullets.

Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with this original lady’s weather-beaten face.  Her skin was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often.  No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality and with native shrewdness.

“Howdy, Miz Yellett,” called out old Sally, hitching her rocker forward, in an excitement she could ill conceal.  “You-uns’ gov’ment come, an’ she ain’t much bigger’n a lettle green gourd.  Don’t seem to have drawed all the growth comin’ to her yit.”

“In roundin’ up the p’ints of my gov’ment, Mis’ Rodney, you don’t want to forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach.”

“Ai-yi!” grimaced old Sally.  “It’s tol’able far to send East for green fruit.  We can take our own pep’mint.”

The prospective advent of a governess in the Yellett family, moreover, one from that mysterious centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted the Yelletts to the reproach of ostentation.  In those days there were no schools in that portion of the Wind River country where the Yelletts grazed their flocks and herds.  Parents anxious to obtain “educational advantages”—­that was the term, irrespective of the age of the student or the school he attended—­ sent them, often, with parental blindness as to the equivocal nature of the blessing thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring towns while they “got their education.”  Or they went uneducated, or they picked up such crumbs of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.  But never, up to the present moment, had any one flown into the face of neighborly precedent except sturdy Sarah Yellett.