"I hadn't realized it when she first got back, except she was pale and far-away in the eyes and et pickles heavily at every meal--oh, mustard, dill, sour, sweet, anything that was pickles--and not enough meat and regular victuals. Gaunted she was, but I didn't suspect her mind was contaminated none till I sprung Chester Timmins on her as a good marrying bet. You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy Eight Ranch over on Pipe Stone--a good, clean boy that'll have the ranch to himself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can't be long now. It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toy of any male--_male_, mind you! It seems when these hussies want to knock man nowadays they call him a male. And she rippled on about the freedom of her soul and her downtrod sisters and this here New Dawn. "Well, sir, a baby could have pushed me flat with one finger. At first I didn' know no better'n to argue with her, I was that affrighted. 'Why, Nettie Hosford,' I says, 'to think I've lived to hear my only sister's only child talking in shrieks like that! To think I should have to tell one of my own kin that women's place is the home. Look at me,' I says--we was down in Red Gap at the time--'pretty soon I'll go up to the ranch and what'll I do there?" I says. "'Well, listen,' I says, 'to a few of the things I'll be doing: I'll be marking, branding, and vaccinating the calves, I'll be classing and turning out the strong cattle on the range. I'll be having the colts rid, breaking mules for haying, oiling and mending the team harness, cutting and hauling posts, tattooing the ears and registering the thoroughbred calves, putting in dams, cleaning ditches, irrigating the flats, setting out the vegetable garden, building fence, swinging new gates, overhauling the haying tools, receiving, marking, and branding the new two--year--old bulls, plowing and seeding grain for our work stock and hogs, breaking in new cooks and blacksmiths'--I was so mad I went on till I was winded. 'And that ain't half of it,' I says. 'Women's work is never done; her place is in the home and she finds so much to do right there that she ain't getting any time to lead a New Dawn. I'll start you easy,' I says; 'learn you to bake a batch of bread or do a tub of washing--something simple--and there's Chet Timmins, waiting to give you a glorious future as wife and mother and helpmeet.' "She just give me one look as cold as all arctics and says, 'It's repellent'--that's all, just 'repellent.' I see I was up against it. No good talking. Sometimes it comes over me like a flash when not to talk. It does to some women. So I affected a light manner and pretended to laugh it off, just as if I didn't see scandal threatening--think of having it talked about that a niece of my own raising was a leader of the New Dawn!