"But they tell me that you are to teach the school," she said.
"For which I am grateful," I answered. "Twenty dollars a month is the salary, and school keeps for six months, so I shall earn the large sum of $120 a year."
"But your pension?"
"With my pension I shall be a nabob in Six Stars. Anywhere else I should cut a very poor figure. But after all, this is the best place, for is there any place where the skies are bluer; is there any place where the grass is greener; is there any place where the storms are wilder than over our mountains?"
"Sometimes I would say in Kansas," the girl answered. "Here the world seems to end at the top of the mountain. It is hard to picture anything beyond that. Out there you raise yourself on tiptoe, and you see the world rolling away for miles and miles, and it seems to have no ending."
"I suppose you will not be able to endure your imprisonment. Some day you will go back to Kansas."
"Some day—perhaps," she laughed. "But now I am a true Black Logger. Look at my gown."
It was the gray Dunkard dress—the concession to her uncle's beliefs on worldliness. It was the first time I had noticed it.
"That is not the garb of Black Log," I said. "It was designed long ago in Germany, after patterns from Heaven."
"And designed by men," said Mary, laughing; "forced by them on a sex which wears ribbons as naturally as a bird does feathers."