and that was the new presiding goddess of the
establishment.

"What on earth does John Folsom want of a housekeeper?" asked the
helpmates of his friends at Fort Emory, and in the bustling, busy town.
"Why don't he marry again?" queried those who would gladly have seen
some unprovided sister, niece or daughter thus cozily disposed of. It
was years since Elinor's mother's death, and yet John Folsom seemed to
mourn her as fondly as ever, and except in mid-winter, barely a month
went by in which he did not make his pilgrimage to her never-neglected
grave. Yet, despite his vigorous years in saddle, sunshine or storm, and
his thorough love for outdoor life, Folsom, now well over fifty, could
no longer so lightly bear the hard life of the field. He was amazed to
see how his sleepless dash to head off Red Cloud, and his days and
nights of gallop back, had told upon him. Women at Fort Emory who looked
with approving eyes on his ruddy face and trim, erect figure, all so
eloquent of health, and who possibly contemplated, too, his solid bank
account, and that fast-building house, the finest in Gate City, had been
telling him all winter long he ought to have a companion--an elder guide
for Miss Elinor on her return; he ought to have some one to preside at
his table; and honest John had promptly answered: "Why, Nell will do all
that," which necessitated their hinting that although Miss Folsom would
be a young lady in years, she was only a child in experience, and would
be much the better for some one who could take a mother's place. "No one
could do that," said John, with sudden swimming of his eyes, and that
put as sudden a stop to their schemings, for the time at least, but only
for the time. Taking counsel together, and thinking how lovely it would
be now if Mr. Folsom would only see how much there was in this unmarried
damsel, or that widowed dame, the coterie at Emory again returned to the
subject, until John, in his perplexity, got the idea that propriety
demanded that he should have a housekeeper against his daughter's
coming, and then he did go and do, in his masculine stupidity, just
exactly what they couldn't have had him do for worlds--invite a woman,
of whom none of their number had ever heard, to come from Omaha and take
the domestic management of his hearth and home. All he knew of her was
what he heard there. She was the widow of a volunteer officer who had
died of disease contracted during the war. She was childless,