Shall
I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad
wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short
hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the
latter. And they'll have my picture, too, with the wild-cats I've
slain, single-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. 'From the Four
Hundred to the Flocks' is the way they'll headline it, and they'll
print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where
I was married. They won't have my picture, but they'll get an artist
to draw it. I'll be wild and woolly, and I'll grow my own wool."
"Octavia!" Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests
she was unable to utter.
"Don't say a word, auntie. I'm going. I'll see the sky at night fit
down on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I'll make friends
again with the stars that I haven't had a chat with since I was a wee
child. I wish to go. I'm tired of all this. I'm glad I haven't any
money. I could bless Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him
for all his bubbles. What if the life will be rough and lonely! I--I
deserve it. I shut my heart to everything except that miserable
ambition. I--oh, I wish to go away, and forget--forget!"
Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her
aunt's lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.
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