Vesty came, just as the firelight grew welcome and tender. She put aside her hat and shawl, unrolled her parcel of sewing-work, and sat down by the little lamp at one end of the room with Miss Pray. She took in my presence naturally, with no obtrusive kindness; she was at a necessitous task--putting a broad gray patch, the best available from the resources at home, on Jimmy Kirtland's brown jacket, doing it deftly with her supple hands. "You'll be doing that for some boys of your own by and by," said Miss Pray, intending to have a cheerful evening. Vesty grew sweet and pale; she shook her head. Her dark eye-sockets had a look, I thought, as though she had been ill and fasting. I mused in the firelight. "And what if that should not be your fate indeed, Vesta Kirtland: not bearing, and toil, and pain, and all the heart-breaking vicissitudes of woman's life, but some peculiar station? "So tall and gracious, to go robed costly, to ride splendidly accoutred and attended, to condescend almost to _all_, to give gracious _downward_ smiles. "What if they knew the power of wealth and alien rank, for that matter, I held in that miserable, lean, little paw of mine! You should outshine Grace Langham as the sun, Vesty. Some time, if she were wronged and sorrowful, could I point her, delicately, with all forbearance and worship of my own, that way?" "Be you rebellious?" Unsuccessful in her cheerful attempts with Vesty, Jane Pray had turned to me. But Vesty resented her companion's question, almost involuntarily turning to me with a quick and awful pity. (No; I had been lost, dreaming: not that way, surely; not though her heart were moved with the purest pity angels could bestow; not thou, Vesty, above all, sweet one, beautiful one! to a union so unfit and repelling.) But I had to bring my thoughts back from a long way to answer Miss Fray's question. "No," I said. "I settled that with God long ago. It is all right between us." Miss Pray, confused by Vesty's look, blushed painfully. "Thank you for asking me about it," I said gently. At that Miss Pray rose. "Come; le's play words," she said. So the girl and the woman folded their sewing, and Miss Pray brought from some hitherto unknown recreative source a little box of cardboard letters, and we sat at the table together. Miss Pray and Vesty thoughtfully selected some letters and shook them together and handed them each to me to make into words. I gave them each a word. The letters I gave Miss Pray composed a simple and striking feature of the Basin vocabulary, "w-h-a-l-e." Those I gave Vesty I studied to make a little more difficult, "c-o-n-t-i-n-u-e." Miss Pray gave me three letters. It happened as I dropped them on the table that they fell of themselves into complete literary sequence, "c-o-w." But Vesty handed me eleven shuffled letters, a ladylike aspiration, and looked at me with a little appealing blush--the Basin school is so brief, so limited in its curriculum.