“Did she not get tired sometimes?”

“A little, but Abner” (the barbarian’s Christian name) “had promised to get her more help next spring, if business was good.”

“How many boarders had she?”

“She believed about forty came to regular meals, and there was transient custom, which was as much as she and her husband could ’tend to.  But he did a great deal of work.”

“What work?”

“O, bringing in the wood, and looking after the traders’ things.”

“How long had she been married?”

“About nine years.  She had lost a little girl and boy.  Three children living.  He was from Illinois.  She from Boston.  Had an education (Boston Female High School,—­Geometry, Algebra, a little Latin and Greek).  Mother and father died.  Came to Illinois alone, to teach school.  Saw him—­yes—­a love match.” ("Two souls,” etc., etc.) “Married and emigrated to Kansas.  Thence across the Plains to California.  Always on the outskirts of civilization.  He liked it.

“She might sometimes have wished to go home.  Would like to on account of her children.  Would like to give them an education.  Had taught them a little herself, but couldn’t do much on account of other work.  Hoped that the boy would be like his father, strong and hearty.  Was fearful the girl would be more like her.  Had often thought she was not fit for a pioneer’s wife.”

“Why?”

“O, she was not strong enough, and had seen some of his friends’ wives in Kansas who could do more work.  But he never complained,—­was so kind.” ("Two souls,” etc.)

Sitting there with her head leaning pensively on one hand, holding the poor, wearied, and limp-looking baby wearily on the other arm, dirty, drabbled, and forlorn, with the firelight playing upon her features no longer fresh or young, but still refined and delicate, and even in her grotesque slovenliness still bearing a faint reminiscence of birth and breeding, it was not to be wondered that I did not fall into excessive raptures over the barbarian’s kindness.  Emboldened by my sympathy, she told me how she had given up, little by little, what she imagined to be the weakness of her early education, until she found that she acquired but little strength in her new experience.  How, translated to a backwoods society, she was hated by the women, and called proud and “fine,” and how her dear husband lost popularity on that account with his fellows.  How, led partly by his roving instincts, and partly from other circumstances, he started with her to California.  An account of that tedious journey.  How it was a dreary, dreary waste in her memory, only a blank plain marked by a little cairn of stones,—­a child’s grave.  How she had noticed that little Willie failed.  How she had called Abner’s attention to it, but, man-like, he knew nothing about children, and pooh-poohed it, and was worried by the stock.  How it happened that after they had passed Sweetwater,