Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not
happened to her, too, in those eight years!
With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left
Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the
West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking
up her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not
as it was before she went West to give her perforated lung to the healing
air of the plains, and to live outdoors with the men--a man's life. Then
she had never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on her actions, except
that, though a hundred men quarrelled openly, or in their own minds,
about her, no one had ever had any right to quarrel about her. With a
tongue which made men gasp with laughter, with as comic a gift as ever
woman had, and as equally comic a face, she had been a good-natured
little tyrant in her way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had
taken one, but always there had been before her mind the picture of a
careworn woman who struggled to bring up her three children honestly, and
without the help of charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness,
had died as Cassy made her first hit on the stage and her name became a
household word.
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