seemed drab to you,—long, weary, prosaic; but you lacked wings, weapons, zeal, and endurance.
Louise was a Spartan both morally and physically. She could ignore transgressions of the social code as easily as she could ignore bodily discomforts. Recently Miriam had seen an example of each. When Pearl Beatty, the schoolteacher, had been made the topic of scandalous gossip which echoed through the Valley, Louise in defiance of her husband and the public had fetched Pearl to the ranch for a week-end, and said to her in effect, "Pearl dear, I'll see that you don't lose your job, provided you don't lose your head. If it's a man you want, wait till you find the right one, then bring him here and I'll protect you both. But if it's a lot of men you want you can't go on teaching school in our Valley; it's too complicated. The only way to play that game with pleasure and profit,—and I doubt whether you're really vicious enough,—is to save your money, go to a big city, buy some good clothes, and sit in the lobby of the leading commercial hotel until fate's finger points." As a result of this manoeuvre some of Pearl's thoughtless exuberance rushed into a channel of devotion to Louise, who seized the occasion to build up in the girl a sense of her own value and then bullied the Valley into respecting it.
As for physical courage, only a few days previously Louise, uttering an occasional "Oh damn!" to relieve her agony, had stoically probed with a needle deep under her thumb-nail to release a gathering that
