"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."
"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"
He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"
"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."
"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours, speaking from experience."
"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"
"They work like the men, only more so."
"Do they have any new things?"
"Not very often, I'm afraid."
She sighed. After a pause, she said: