He says to me afterward why don't I train some of mine and trim
her good? But I told him I'm cinched for hell, anyway, and don't have to
make it tighter by torturing poor dumb brutes.
"That's what it amounted to. Having got Angora chaps and cowboy hats for
herself and offsprings, what do they do but get on ponies and chase
this herd all over creation, whirling their ropes, yelling, shooting in
the air--just like you see on any well-conducted ranch. Once in a while
the old lady herself, being a demon rider, would rope an animal and
fetch it down; but brother and sister was very careful not to tangle
their own ropes on anything. They didn't shoot their guns with any
proper spirit, either; and when they tried to yip like cowboys they
sounded like rabbits. And brother having to smoke brown-paper
cigarettes, which he hated like poison and had trouble in rolling!
"Mother could roll 'em, all right--do it with one hand. And she urged
sister to; but sister rebelled for once. The old lady admitted this was
due to a fault in her early training. It seems her grandmother had been
one of the old-fashioned sort; and, having studied the modern young
woman of society in Boston and New York, she'd promised sister a string
of pearls if she didn't either smoke or drink till her twenty-first
birthday.
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