She used to come back every summer, bringin' a lot of chums an' all kinds o' pets with her. She was just daffy over any kind of a wild animal from an Injun papoose to a white mouse; an' when she'd go back in the fall, Jabez had his hands full with parrots an' alligators an' butterfly coons an' sech--to say nothin' of a lot of potted flowers what was mighty notionable in their tastes. I was so busy tendin' to this branch o' the outfit that about all the ridin' I did was for exercise--yes, an' for company, 'cause it allus seemed as if she was along when I'd be out on the range. Then, again, I allus felt a kind of drawin', myself, to the silent people, who think an' wish an' feel, just the same as we do, but aren't able to handle our langwidge. I got so I could purt' nigh tell what an animal had on his mind, just from tendin' to her speciments. She had one speciment which was a possom, an' the blame thing bit me eight times one winter, me tryin' to give it baths--an' then she wrote back home that the doggone critter didn't need'em nohow. She purt'nigh got expended for takin' a rattlesnake back to the university an' keepin' it hid in her room; an' after I'd had a deuce of a time catchin' 'em, they made her send a bob-cat an' a mountain lion to some kind of a garden--wouldn't let her keep 'em at all. The professors allus was a sore trial to her, but once she began a thing she allus fought it through, so she put up with 'em the best way she could. She used to tell us that bein' housed up like to 'a' drove her crazy at first, an' they was so tarnation fussy that she felt like a hobbled pony in a stampede. They wouldn't even let her picket her ponies out in what they call the campus, which she said was just drippin' fat with rich grass, an' nary a hoof to graze it. Why, they even had fool notions about havin' certain hours about goin' to bed, an' even when you had to put your lights out. One night she got fidgety an' nervous with the lonesomeness of it, an' she got up about one o'clock an' fired her revolvers out the window,--just for sport, you know, like a feller sometimes will when he's--well, when his soul gets kind o' itchy like,--an' it purt' nigh started a riot. She said 'at we wouldn't never believe how different the people was down there. I reckon a university must be run a good bit like a penitentiary. But as I said, she wasn't no quitter, an' I reckon, takin' it all in all, she give 'em back about as good as they sent.