When she asked one gangling fellow how many eights are in ninety-six, he thought for a while. In the Erie Canal,' he answers. Waxham's descriptions of her surroundings are as unadorned and powerful as the landscape itself. His face was kindly, with shrewd blue twinkling eyes. . . . But his voice was most peculiar and characteristic.
Close analysis fails to find the charm of it. . . .
John Love found no fault with the new schoolteacher. From the day he met her, he worked doggedly to win her, continuing the courtship by mail after Waxham left the ranch. I was nearly as stubborn in refusing as he was in insisting. Nearly, but not quite. Perhaps it was her disillusionment with the teaching profession that began at the prison-like convent school in Wisconsin and deepened with the tedium of a high school French class in Pueblo, Colorado.