"I'm sure it must be," agreed Bennington uncomfortably.
"What was I a-sayin'? You must excuse me, Mr. de Laney, but you, being
a man, can have no idea of the life us poor women folks lead, slavin'
our very lives away to keep things runnin', and then no thanks fer it
a'ter all. I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try it fer jest one week.
He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often. This country's
jest awful, too. I tell him he must get out sometimes, and I 'spect he
will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst
to go back East again. When we lived East, Mr. de Laney, we had a
house--not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen
rooms, and I had a gal to help me and some chanst to buy things once in
a while, but now that Bill Lawton's moved West, what's goin' to become
o' me I don't know. I'm nigh wore out with it all."
"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington.
"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knows I wisht we
lived there yet, though the farmin' was a sight of work and no pay
sometimes." The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too much for
her. "Heaven knows, you ain't t' git much to eat," she cried, jumping
up, "but you ain't goin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right
off and tend to them biscuit."
She bustled out. Bennington had time then to notice the decorations of
the "parlour." They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East
and West--reminiscences of the old home in "Illinoy" and trophies of
the new camping-out on the frontier. From the ceiling hung a heavy lamp
with prismatic danglers, surrounded by a globe on which were depicted
stags in the act of leaping six-barred gates. By way of complement to
this gorgeous centrepiece, the paper on the walls showed, in infinitely
recurring duplicate, a huntress in green habit and big hat carrying on
a desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the
fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued
a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered
with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath
which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the
room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two
china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a
massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked
an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag
carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green
copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining
pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz,
all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the
carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a
timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He
was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.