Only a few feet away another girl, slight and fair-haired, was nimbly plying her needle upon a pile of white lawn, as to the object of which there could be small enough doubt. She was working with the care and obvious appreciation which most women display toward the manufacture of delicate underclothing.
As her companion laid her book aside and turned toward the valley, the pretty needlewoman raised a pair of gray, speculative eyes. But almost at once they dropped again to her work. It was only for a moment, however. She reached the end of her seam and began to fold the material up, and, as she did so, her eyes were once more raised in the direction of her sister, only now they were full of laughter.
“Kate,” she said, in a tone in which mirth would not be denied, “do you know, it’s five years to-day since we first came to Rocky Springs? Five years.” She breathed a profound sigh, which was full of mockery. “You were twenty-three when we came. You are twenty-eight now, and I am twenty-two. We’ll soon be old maids. The folks down there,” she went on, nodding at the village below, “will soon be speaking of us as ‘them two old guys,’ or ‘them funny old dears, the Seton sisters.’ Isn’t it awful to think of? We came out West to find husbands for ourselves, and here we are very nearly—old maids.”
Kate Seton’s eyes wore a responsive twinkle, but she did not turn.
“You’re a bit of a joke, Hel,” she replied, in the slow musical fashion of a deep contralto voice.
“But I’m not a joke,” protested the other, with pretended severity. “And I won’t be called ‘Hel,’ just because my name’s Helen. It—it sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they’ve been spending their pay at Dirty O’Brien’s. Besides, it doesn’t alter facts at all. It won’t take much more climbing to find ourselves right on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking utensils. I’m—I’m tired of it—I—really am. It’s no use talking. I’m a woman, and I’d sooner see a pair of trousers walking around my house than another bunch of skirts—even if they belong to my beloved sister. Trousers go every time—with me.”
Kate withdrew her gaze from the village below and looked into her sister’s pretty face with smiling, indulgent eyes.
“Well?” she said.
The other shook her fair head. Her eyes were still laughing, but their expression did not hide the seriousness which lay behind them.