Mrs. Jardine lay back in her chair laughing.

“You are the most refreshing person I have met in all my travels.  Then to put it baldly, you want of life a man, a farm, and a family.”

“You comprehend me beautifully,” said Kate.  “All my life I’ve worked like a towhead to help earn two hundred acres of land for someone else.  I think there’s nothing I want so much as two hundred acres of land for myself.  I’d undertake to do almost anything with it, if I had it.  I know I could, if I had the shoulder-to-shoulder, real man.  You notice it will take considerable of a man to touch shoulders with me; I’m a head taller than most of them.”

Mrs. Jardine looked at her speculatively.  “Ummm!” she murmured.  Kate laughed.

“For eighteen years I have been under marching orders,” said Kate.  “Over a year ago I was advised by a minister to ’take the wings of morning’ so I took wing.  I started on one grand flight and fell ker-smash in short order.  Life since has been a series of battering my wings until I have almost decided to buy some especially heavy boots, and walk the remainder of the way.  As a concrete example, I started out yesterday morning wearing a hat that several very reliable parties assured me would so assist me to flight that I might at least have a carriage.  Where, oh, where are my hat and my carriage now?  The carriage, non est!  The hat —­ I am humbly hoping some little country girl, who has lived a life as barren as mine, will find the remains and retrieve the velvet bow for a hair-ribbon.  As for the man that Leghorn hat was supposed to symbolize, he won’t even look my way when I appear in my bobby little sailor.  He’s as badly crushed out of existence as my beautiful hat.”

“You never should have been wearing such a hat to travel in, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Jardine.

“Certainly not!” said Kate.  “I knew it.  My sister told me that.  Common sense told me that!  But what has that got to do with the fact that I was wearing the hat?  I guess I have you there!”

“Far from it!” said Mrs. Jardine.  “If you’re going to start out in life, calmly ignoring the advice of those who love you, and the dictates of common sense, the result will be that soon the wheels of life will be grinding you, instead of a train making bag-rags of your hat.”

“Hummm!” said Kate.  “There is food for reflection there.  But wasn’t it plain logic, that if the hat was to bring the man, it should be worn where at any minute he might see it?”

“But my dear, my dear!  If such a man as a woman like you should have, had seen you wearing that hat in the morning, on a railway train, he would merely have thought you prideful and extravagant.  You would have been far more attractive to any man I know in your blue sunbonnet.”

“I surely have learned that lesson,” said Kate.  “Hereafter, sailors or sunbonnets for me in the morning.  Now what may I do to add to your comfort?”