shioned a cigarette from materials at her hand.

In the flame of a lighted match Mrs. Pettengill's eyes sparkled with a
kind of savage retrospection. She shrugged it off impatiently.

"I guess you thought I spoke a mite short when you asked about Nettie's
wedding yesterday."

It was true. She had turned the friendly inquiry with a rather
mystifying abruptness. I murmured politely. She blew twin jets of smoke
from the widely separated corners of her generous mouth and then
shrewdly narrowed her gaze to some distant point of narration.

"Yes, sir, I says to her, 'Woman's place is the home.' And what you
think she come back with? That she was going to be a leader of the New
Dawn. Yes, sir, just like that. Five feet one, a hundred and eight
pounds in her winter clothes, a confirmed pickle eater--pretty enough,
even if she is kind of peaked and spiritual looking--and going to lead
the New Dawn.

"Where'd she catch it? My fault, of course, sending her back East to
school and letting her visit the W.B. Hemingways, Mrs. H. being the
well-known clubwoman like the newspapers always print under her photo in
evening dress. That's how she caught it all right.

"I hadn't realized it when she first got back, except she was pale and
far-away in the eyes and et pickles heavily at every meal--oh, mustard,
dill, sour, sweet, anything that was pickles--and not enough meat and
regular victuals. Gaunted she was, but I didn't suspect her mind was
contaminated none till I sprung Chester Timmins on her as a good
marrying bet. You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy Eight
Ranch over on Pipe Stone--a good, clean boy that'll have the ranch to
himself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can't be long
now. It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toy
of any male--_male_, mind you! It seems when these hussies want to knock
man nowadays they call him a male. And she rippled on about the freedom
of her soul and her downtrod sisters and this here New Dawn.

"Well, sir, a baby could have pushed me flat with one finger. At first I
didn' know no better'n to argue with her, I was that affrighted. 'Why,
Nettie Hosford,' I says, 'to think I've lived to hear my only sister's
only child talking in shrieks like that! To think I should have to tell
one of my own kin that women's place is the home. Look at me,' I
says--we was down in Red Gap at the time--'pretty soon I'll go up to the
ranch and what'll I do there?"