“O——,” replied Sis. She never could talk to him.
“Dad home?”
“Nope.”
“Hunting?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I’ve come to make my party call for the last time I was here. Got anything to eat?”
“Only bacon and eggs.”
“Good enough for a prince—if the prince is as hungry as I am. All right, get them ready. I’ll go and take care of Noche. Come, Noche—want some water, old girl?” He led off the horse, and Sis turned from the doorway to the kitchen. As she did so she stepped just for one moment into a little room that, were she a lady, she would call her boudoir, though it was but little larger than a good sized piano box, and looked searchingly at her own face in a bit of broken looking glass. What did she see? No thing of beauty, I assure you. This girl had not been dowered by God with that divine gift that makes every woman who possesses it a queen. Far from it. But so ignorant of the world was she, so much an utter stranger to the appearance of others of her sex, that she did not know that she was remarkably homely. Freckle faced, pug nosed, red haired, rough and worn with work, she was in appearance positively ugly. She had often asked her father whether or not she was good looking, and he had invariably replied “Yes.” But he always said it in such a way that poor Sis began at last to suspect that she was not really as beautiful as the heroines of Scott’s novels (she knew the descriptions of them by heart.) Still it might be, and she hoped—a thing that a woman does almost as easily as she forgives.
The supper was eaten in the usual wondering silence on her part and the running fire of nonsense on the part of the lieutenant. He accused her of being in love with “Peg-leg,” the mule driver, and was cheerfully unconscious of the fact that his words tortured her heart until she almost broke down and cried before him. He told her all the news of the post and the latest jokes on the officers in an endeavor—a vain one—to make her laugh. People who have lived ten years in a desert do not laugh. At last it was over, and she cleared away and washed the dishes. He smoked his pipe the while, wondering how in the world she came to be so homely, wondering how she managed to exist in such a place, and coming to a mental conclusion as to how long he himself could stand such a life before committing suicide. Then he went out and took a stroll on the sandy desert. Old McCoy was not in sight, and though it was moonlight it was hardly probable that he would return that night. He congratulated himself, too, that Sis had not been brought up to the ideas of good society, else he would have to make his bed in the hay that night and leave the house, double barred and locked, to Sis. He even thoughtlessly muttered to himself, “What a wonderful protection a homely face is!” Then he went back to the kitchen to talk to Sis a while before going to bed. As he entered a sight met his astonished eyes that almost made him burst with laughter. It was nothing more nor less than Sis arrayed in a gown that would have been an absurdity in caricature. Green satin trimmed with red ribbons and a red sash, formless, shapeless, it was her pitiful attempt to appear beautiful. Her great hands hung from the sleeves like baskets from the branches of an apple tree. Her red face and hair looked redder still by the contrast with the gaudy colors of the dress, and she stood in the habitual slouching attitude so characteristic of her. Yet there was something in her gray eyes that told him it was a supreme moment in her life—the wearing of this dress—and he did not laugh. Indeed, for a moment he almost felt sad. He tried to sit down as unconcernedly as possible, and busied himself filling his pipe. He did not dare to look at her. He hoped she would do something or say something, but she did not. She stood there silent, intense, looking at him so earnestly that it was but too manifest that she was trying to read his thoughts. He must do something.
“Where did you get that dress, Sis?” he said as quietly as he could.