“Well,” she went on presently. “Let us keep to the charge. Five years ago this spirit of independence and adventure was very strong in Kate Seton. Far, far stronger than it is now. That’s by the way. Say, anyhow, it was so strong then that when these two found themselves alone in the world with their money, it was her idea to break through all convention, leave her little village in New England, go out west, and seek ‘live’ men and fortune on the rolling plains of Canada. The last part of that’s put in for effect.”
The girl paused, watching her sister as she turned again toward the valley below.
With a sigh of resignation Helen was forced to proceed. “That’s five years—ago,” she said. Then, dropping her voice to a note of pathos, and with the pretense of a sob: “Five long years ago two lonely girls, orphans, set out from their conventional home in a New England village, after having sold it out—the home, not the village—and turned wistful faces toward the wild green plains of the western wilderness, the home of the broncho, the gopher, and the merciless mosquito.”
“Oh, do get on,” Kate’s smile was good to see.
“It’s emotion,” said Helen, pretending to dab her eyes. “It’s emotion mussing up the whole blamed business, as Nick would say.”
“Never mind Nick,” cried her sister. “Anyway, I don’t think he swears nearly as much as you make out. I’ll soon have to go and get the Meeting House ready for to-morrow’s service. So——”
“Ah, that’s just it,” broke in Helen, with a great display of triumph in her laughing eyes. “Five years ago Kate Seton would never have said that. She’d have said, ‘bother the old Meeting House, and all the old cats who go there to slander each other in—in the name of religion.’ That’s what she’d have said. It’s all different now. Gone is her love of adventure; gone is her defiance of convention; gone is—is her independence. What is she now? A mere farmer, a drudging female, spinster farmer, growing cabbages and things, and getting her manicured hands all mussed up, and freckles on her otherwise handsome face.”
“A successful—female, spinster farmer,” put in Kate, in her deep, soft voice.
Helen nodded, and there was a sort of helplessness in her admission.
“Yes,” she sighed, “and that’s the worst of it. We came to find husbands—‘live’ husbands, and we only find—cabbages. The man-hunters. That’s what we called ourselves. It sounded—uncommon, and so we used the expression.” Suddenly she scrambled to her feet in undignified haste, and shook a small, clenched fist in her sister’s direction. “Kate Seton,” she cried, “you’re a fraud. An unmitigated—fraud. Yes, you are. Don’t glare at me. ‘Live’ men! Adventure! Poof! You’re as tame as any village cat, and just as—dozy.”