"A large bank account?" Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which was
not of a highly sensitive order.

"He has a large heart," said her mother.

"And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like the
roof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head down
on it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree, and he
strokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a soldier he
shall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna complexion,
and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's waist-measure, do
you suppose?"

Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent woman
who has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how uncritical
she was of Christine's "unruly member."

"It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons like
your mother and the colonel," she said placidly. "You like it very much
out here?"

"Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life."

"And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?"

"Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way out."

"There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something."
Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost
oracular.