evidence of having borne the brunt of merciless desert suns, snows,
blizzards, and the ubiquitous alkali dust of all seasons, she wore a pink
sun-bonnet, though the hour was one past sundown, and though she sat
beneath her own roof-tree, even if lacking the protection of four walls.
From the corner of her mouth protruded a snuff-brush, so constantly in
this accustomed place that it had come to be regarded by members of her
family as part and parcel of her attire—the first thing assumed in the
morning, the last thing laid aside at night. Mary Carmichael had little
difficulty in recognizing Judith Rodney’s step-mother, _née_ Tumlin—she
who had been the heroine of the romance lately recorded.

Mrs. Rodney’s interest in the girl alighting from the stage was evinced in
the palsied motion of the chair as it quivered slightly back and forth in
place of the swinging seesaw with which she was wont to wear the hours
away. The snuff-brush was brought into more fiercely active commission,
but she said nothing till Mary Carmichael was within a few inches of her.
Then, shifting the snuff-brush to a position more favorable to
enunciation, she said: "Howdy? Ye be Miz Yellett’s gov’ment, ain’t ye?"
There was something threatening in her aspect, as if the office of
governess to the Yelletts carried some challenging quality.

"Government?" repeated Mary, vaguely, her head still rumbling with the
noise and motion of the stage; "I’m afraid I hardly understand."

"Ain’t you-uns goin’ to teach the Yellett outfit ther spellin’, writin’,
and about George Washington, an’ how the Yankees kem along arter he was in
his grave an’ fit us and broke up the kentry so we had ter leave our home
in Tennessee an’ kem to this yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the
diffunce between aig-bread an’ corn-dodger? I war a Miss Tumlin from
Tennessee."