“I didn’t know you felt that way about the ranch, Justin. I thought you shared my view, that I was doing something worth while when I raised hundreds of cattle every year to help feed the world. If I had known you thought I was degrading myself—” She stopped, a tremolo of anger in her throat.
“I didn’t say that, Betty.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“No. No, it isn’t. I meant only that—well, there’s something very very precious that some girls have—that you have, Betty—something that’s like the bloom of a peach. If you lose it—well, it’s gone, that’s all.”
“And if I do anything that’s worth while—if I pay my way in the world by giving value received—the peach bloom is rubbed off, isn’t it?” she retorted scornfully.
“Aren’t there different ways of giving service? We are in danger of forgetting the home, which is the normal place for a young girl.”
“Is it? Thought you came from a city where thousands of girls go down to offices and stores every morning to earn a living.”
They stood on a small hilltop and looked over a world blanketed in white which flashed back countless gleams of light to the heliographing sun, a world so virgin clean, so still and empty of life, that it carried Betty back to the birthday of the race. She was, miraculously, at the beginning of things again.
“You’re not in a city fortunately,” he answered. “There’s no economic pressure on you to fight sordidly for a living.”
Her eyes sparkled. “You’re not consistent. When the city ways don’t suit you, I’m to live like people in the country, but when you don’t approve of ranch ways, then I’m to be like girls in Denver. I’m not to go into business, but I’m not to be neighborly as my mother was.”