"I might do that if I get any worse, but I hate to have you stay in the house another night. It's only fit for these goats of cowboys and women like Hett Jackson. Did the bugs eat you last night?" Virginia flushed. "Yes." Eliza's face fell. "I was afraid of that. You can't keep 'em out. The cowboys bring 'em in by the quart." "They can be destroyed--and the flies, too, can't they?" "When you've bucked flies and bugs as long as I have, you'll be less 'peart about it. I don't care a hoot in Hades till somebody like you or Reddy or Ross comes along. Most of the men that camp with me are like Injuns, anyway--they wouldn't feel natural without bugs a ticklin' 'em. No, child, you get ready and pull out on the Sulphur stage to-morrow. I'll pay your way back to Philadelphy." "I can't leave you now, mother. Now that I know you're ill, I'm going to stay and take care of you." Lize rose. "See here, girl, don't you go to idealizin' me, neither. I'm what the boys call an old battle-axe. I've been through the whole war. I'm able to feed myself and pay your board besides. Just you find some decent boarding-place in Sulphur, and I'll see that you have ten dollars a week to live on, just because you're a Wetherford." "But I'm your daughter!" Again Eliza fixed a musing look upon her. "I reckon if the truth was known your aunt Celia was nigher to being your mother than I ever was. They always said you was all Wetherford, and I reckon they were right. I always liked men better than babies. So long as I had your father, you didn't count--now that's the God's truth. And I didn't intend that you should ever come back here. I urged you to stay--you know that." Lee Virginia imagined all this to be a savage self-accusation which sprang from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she do with elemental savagery of this sort? The knowledge that she must spend another night in the bed led her to active measures of reform. With disgustful desperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, Virginia moved on the dining-room. As the ranger had said, this, too, could be reformed.