The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1925-03-26
III

Muriel Benham was ~savagely s
woman. She conceived woman as 8
species as distinct from males as flora
is distinct from fauna. The acquisi
ton by women of the right to vote haG
been the occasion for mourning, as
Peter found out before Mrs. Austin
Benham had beamed through two
meals, first upon her guest and then
upon her lovely daughter.
The widow of Austin, as DeWolfe
neglect of the calendar, was a true
beamer. She did not beam with the
insincere beam of affectation, but with
the beam of an expansive nature ooz-
ing good will and demonstrativeness
through the crevices it could find in
the walls of a life which was like a
vessel of conventionality, containing,
according to all the traditions of her
husbands family, a liquor of precious
quality, not to be spent freely. She
believed in new things and in a new
world, but she beamed upon Muriel
hOt OCNouoC SHC dSISCu Will DOI Out
because, not daring to voice an opin-
ion, she could still love her daughter
for being so healthy and so irreproach-
able.
Muriel considered herself as dedi-
Gated by duty and adaptability to being
a woman, and being a woman meant
that her brown hair must be made at
tractive and stable for tennis-a game
which she executed with a good deal
Of dash, in a costume designed to
keep freckleS off a milk-white skin.
Even her forearms were covered in the
game she took from DeWolfe, who
made rather a botch of his unprac-
ticed play, because just as it was a
womanly woman's duty to be well ex-
ercised and in fine condition for the
market, so also was it her duty to be
milk-white in an evening dress. The
thought made her appear before
Peter in the hedge-walled garden be- /
fore breakfast clad in a part wispy
and part fluffy gown, with a basket of
roses hung on one elbow and flower
scissors in the other hand.
"You do all things so well,' said
Peter with a great delight filling his
being. There is a ~thOrOughness in
your method which positively upsets
l looked at the library in your
study and as far as l car see you have
spent your twenty years collecting,
among others, books on how to do
Things-how to ride a horse, how to
play golf, how to knit, how to cast a
iy, how to speak Italian, how to grow
'oses, and who knows what else"
The English girl was sincerely crate
to practice the methods-these
ire the sure steps toward results; but
you must not think l take myself too
seriously, as my brother probably told
7ou. | think it is all as nothing com
pared to the skill of being a woman
fit woman-a woman whose n aim
S to be a woman"
'You have attained it," said Peter, a
title light dancing in his eyes under
lis heavy brows as f~iref1ies sparkle be-
lind a hedge.
The girl tossed the ball up and
.aught it in her white skirt spread
rom knee to knee as she sat cross
egged upon the edge of the Benhams'
avn. This lawn began again after
he interruption of the square tennis
curt and rolled gently down to a line
# trees at the bottom of the hill that
lalf hides the little town of Becon
With it's nesting red brick houses with
heir chimney pots and roofs tempered
" the smoke of Goals on home fires.
they lived peaceably together without
nv bold assertions of individuality,
zone of them doing any outrage to the
countryside, as Peter, contrasting it
With an American town, had said.
the village were the chalk
Towns where grass was light green
nd the heather a deeper color, and
arrow roads were as white as
marks of crayon, and trees standing
lone were like feathery plumes stuck
ere and there into the rolling country
some giant hand. Somewhere, still
urther on, was the sea into which the
right sky fell like a blue back curtain
licked with clouds of feathery white. .
Peter, with half-closed eyes, gaZed
ut across this magnificence of quiet
toward the distant backbone Of
chalk rid where ancient Britons
nee drove their cattle into caves and
,ruid priests had once held solemn
ties. He was quite unconscious Of
Iuriel's attention fixed upon him \
omewhat as a faithful dog watches a \
he had been in many of his \
wn dreams in these ten days and
hight we'll be forgiven for failing to \
office that something of violence was \
uing OH within this English girl \
hose outlines. like those If a volcano,
ere still clear and cold against the
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