Eliza's face fell. "I was afraid of that. You can't keep 'em out. The
cowboys bring 'em in by the quart."
"They can be destroyed--and the flies, too, can't they?"
"When you've bucked flies and bugs as long as I have, you'll be less
'peart about it. I don't care a hoot in Hades till somebody like you or
Reddy or Ross comes along. Most of the men that camp with me are like
Injuns, anyway--they wouldn't feel natural without bugs a ticklin' 'em.
No, child, you get ready and pull out on the Sulphur stage to-morrow. I'll
pay your way back to Philadelphy."
"I can't leave you now, mother. Now that I know you're ill, I'm going to
stay and take care of you."
Lize rose. "See here, girl, don't you go to idealizin' me, neither. I'm
what the boys call an old battle-axe. I've been through the whole war. I'm
able to feed myself and pay your board besides. Just you find some decent
boarding-place in Sulphur, and I'll see that you have ten dollars a week
to live on, just because you're a Wetherford."
"But I'm your daughter!"
Again Eliza fixed a musing look upon her. "I reckon if the truth was known
your aunt Celia was nigher to being your mother than I ever was. They
always said you was all Wetherford, and I reckon they were right. I always
liked men better than babies. So long as I had your father, you didn't
count--now that's the God's truth. And I didn't intend that you should
ever come back here. I urged you to stay--you know that."
Lee Virginia imagined all this to be a savage self-accusation which sprang
from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its
brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then
went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she
do with elemental savagery of this sort?
The knowledge that she must spend another night in the bed led her to
active measures of reform. With disgustful desperation, she emptied the
room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the
passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried
from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She
inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the
lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in
open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon.
Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, Virginia moved on the
dining-room. As the ranger had said, this, too, could be reformed.
Unheeding her mother's protests, she organized the giggling waiters into a
warring party, and advanced upon the flies. By hissing and shooing, and
the flutter of newspapers, they drove the enemy before them, and a
carpenter was called in to mend screen doors and windows, thus preventing
their return. New shades were hung to darken the room, and new
table-cloths purchased to replace the old ones, and the kitchen had such a
cleaning as it had not known before in five years.
In this work the time passed swiftly, and when Redfield and Cavanagh came
again to lunch they exclaimed in astonishment--as, indeed, every one did.
"How's this?" queried Cavanagh, humorously. "Has the place 'changed
hands?'"