Little Lady of the Big House | Page 8

as well as a love-match. We just
couldn't help it. That far, I agree. She had planned unheard-of
achievements, while I saw nothing else than the deanship of the
College of Agriculture. We just couldn't help it. But that was fifteen
years ago, and fifteen years have made all the difference in the world in
the ambitions and ideals of our young women."
"Don't you believe it for a moment. I tell you, Mr. Crellin, it's a statistic.
All contrary things are transient. Ever woman remains Avoman,
everlasting, eternal. Not until our girl-children cease from playing with
dolls and from looking at their own enticingness in mirrors, will
woman ever be otherwise than what she has always been: first, the
mother, second, the mate of man. It is a statistic. I've been looking up
the girls who graduate from the State Normal. You will notice that
those who marry by the way before graduation are excluded.
Nevertheless, the average length of time the graduates actually teach
school is little more than two years. And when you consider that a lot
of them, through ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and
are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how they cut down
the period of teaching of the marriageable ones."
"A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way where mere men are
concerned," Crellin muttered, unable to dispute his employer's figures
but resolved to look them up.

"And your girl-woman will go to Stanford," Forrest laughed, as he
prepared to lift his mare into a gallop, "and you and I and all men, to
the end of time, will see to it that they do have their way."
Crellin smiled to himself as his employer diminished down the road;
for Crellin knew his Kipling, and the thought that caused the smile was:
"But where's the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest?" He decided to repeat it
to Mrs. Crellin over the breakfast coffee.
Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the Big House. The man
he stopped he addressed as Mendenhall, who was his horse-manager as
well as pasture expert, and who was reputed to know, not only every
blade of grass on the ranch, but the length of every blade of grass and
its age from seed-germination as well.
At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the two colts he was
driving in a double breaking-cart. What had caused Forrest to signal
was a glance he had caught, across the northern edge of the valley, of
great, smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by the sun and deeply
green where they projected into the vast flat of the Sacramento Valley.
The talk that followed was quick and abbreviated to terms of
understanding between two men who knew. Grass was the subject.
Mention was made of the winter rainfall and of the chance for late
spring rains to come. Names occurred, such as the Little Coyote and
Los Cuatos creeks, the Yolo and the Miramar hills, the Big Basin,
Round Valley, and the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges.
Movements of herds and droves, past, present, and to come, were
discussed, as well as the outlook for cultivated hay in far upland
pastures and the estimates of such hay that still remained over the
winter in remote barns in the sheltered mountain valleys where herds
had wintered and been fed.
Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest was saved the trouble of
tying the Man-Eater. A stableman came on the run to take the mare,
and Forrest, scarce pausing for a word about a horse by the name of
Duddy, was clanking his spurs into the Big House.

CHAPTER III

Forrest entered a section of the Big House by way of a massive, hewn-
timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a
donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various
directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched
cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It
was this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused,
holding the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement
room where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved refrigerator
flanked by an ice-machine and a dynamo. On the floor, in greasy
overalls, squatted a greasy little man to whom his employer nodded.
"Anything wrong, Thompson?" he asked.
"There _was,"_ was the answer, positive and complete.
Forrest closed the door and went on along a passage that was like a
tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, like the slits for archers in
medieval castles, dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access to a
long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which an ox could
have been roasted.