"Mercy!" exclaimed the girl, "that would settle me sure enough! What a horrible proposition to consider! Just look at my mother--beset with nervousness and unrest; look at that poor Mrs. Cresmond and a dozen others--perfect slaves to their husbands. Look at Clarice--she never knew a moment's happiness until Henry Van Rensselaer died! Yes, I think marriage _settles_ a girl all right! What terrible mismated failures on every hand! It's simply appalling, Jim! I've never yet known one perfectly happy couple, and how any girl who sees this condition about her, everywhere, can dream her own ideal love dream, picture her ideal man, and plan and believe in an ideal life, while she herself is surrounded by such pitiful object-lessons, is a wonder!" "I ain't much of a philosopher," said old Jim, "but it's always been my notion that most wimmen _don't_ see what's goin' on around 'em. They think their own troubles is worse'n anybody's an' 're so taken up whinin' over 'em that their view is somewhat obstructed. Take the clear-headed person that _can_ see, an' they ain't a-goin' to run into any matrimonial fire, no more'n I'm goin' to head my horse over a cut-bank. They're goin' straight after the happiness they know exists, an' they ain't goin' to make no mistake about it neither, if they've got any judgment, whatever." "What made my mother marry my father?" asked the girl, lifting up her head and facing old Jim squarely. "That's the worst specimen of ill-assorted marriages I know of." Jim McCullen looked perplexed for an instant. "I don't think that was in the beginning," he replied thoughtfully, "but your mother got to hankerin' after her city life, her balls an' theaters an' the like o' that. After she got a fall from her horse an' couldn't ride no more she didn't seem to take interest in anything at the ranch, an' kept gettin' more nervous all the time. I reckon her health had something to do with it, an' then she got weaned from the ranch, bein' away so much. It wasn't her life any more." "And now even her visits there are torture to her," said Hope bitterly. "She is drunk with the deadly wine of frivolous uselessness--society!" Then sadly, "What a wealth of happiness she might have possessed had she chosen wisely!" "But she was like a ship without a rudder; she didn't have no one to guide her, an' now she thinks she's happy, I reckon," remarked McCullen, adding, after a pause, "If she thinks at all!" "And poor Clarice was a baby when _she_ married," mused the girl. "And that Cresmond woman always was a blame fool," concluded Jim. "So there's hope for you yet, don't you reckon there is? That reminds me, here's a letter from O'Hara. There's a nice fellow for you, Hopie." "Yes, he's a good boy, Larry is," she remarked absently, taking the letter he handed to her.