She scored in any contest--in spite of her rather small
brain, large heart, and ardent appearance. A very clever, shiftless
Irish husband had made her develop shrewdness, and she was so busy
watching and fending her daughter that she did not need to watch and fend
herself to the same extent as she would have done had she been free and
childless and thirty. The widow Tynan was practical, and she saw none of
those things which made her daughter stand for minutes at a time and look
into the distance over the prairie towards the sunset light or the grey-
blue foothills. She never sang--she had never sung a note in her life;
but this girl of hers, with a man's coat in her hand, and eyes on the
joyous scene before her, was for ever humming or singing. She had even
sung in the church choir till she declined to do so any longer, because
strangers stared at her so; which goes to show that she was not so vain
as people of her colouring sometimes are. It was just as bad, however,
when she sat in the congregation; for then, too, if she sang, people
stared at her. So it was that she seldom went to church at all; but it
was not because of this that her ideas of right and wrong were quite
individual and not conventional, as the tale of the matrimonial deserter
will show.
This was not church, however, and briskly applying a light whisk-broom to
the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her when he was
in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fair
proportion of the time.
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