a cow-boy, for a while
at least--"

"Don't delude yourself. You would not be the least bit of a cow-boy.
You wouldn't even look picturesque--if you did you might be sorry.
You would just be a plain northern California rancher. Of course
you would have all the riding you wanted, but there are no round-ups
worth speaking of on a ranch the size of Lumalitas. And probably you
would continue to let sections of it to men that wanted to raise cattle
or horses on a small scale. You had better devote yourself to the dairy
and to raising hay and grain, and turn about five hundred acres into a
chicken-ranch--nothing pays like that."

He threw back his head and laughed as heartily as if death and disaster
had never been.

"From the English hustings and the greatest parliamentary body the world
has ever known to chickens and butter in California! From Capheaton to
Rosewater, oil-skin overalls and a linen 'Duster!' Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!
But give me a comprehensive idea of the place, in your own inimitable
unvarnished diction. That will keep the ghosts off, at all events."

XVIII

Julia Kaye was one of those women designed by nature for the role of a
Valerie Marneffe, or of that astute Parisian's bourgeoise and more
romantic daughter, Emma Bovary; but tossed, in the gamble of the fates,
into a setting of respectable opulence, where her instincts for prey
were trimmed of their crudities, and the vehemence of her passions
subdued by the opportunity to gratify all other whims and desires.

Her father, born in the sooty alley of a manufacturing town in the north
of England, had run away to sea in his boyhood, deserted in the port of
New York, starved, stolen, peddled, washed dishes in cheap restaurants,
shovelled snow, tramped to Chicago, starved and peddled and shovelled
again, finally found a position with a firm of wholesale druggists. He
attended a night school, proved himself a lad of uncommon sharpness, and
in less than a year was first packing and then dispensing drugs. Five
years later he was drawing a large salary, and at the age of thirty he
had opened a retail drug store of his own.

It was during his earlier period of comparative leisure and peace of
mind that he began to test the inventive faculty that had pricked him in
small but significant ways during his boyhood. His first inventions were
of a minor importance, although they increased his income and were
permanently remunerative; but when he turned the torch