"I don't see," said her lover, "but that my strenuous Amazon is just as
much a woman as--as any woman!"
"Who ever said I wasn't?" quoth Diantha demurely.
A month of perfect happiness. It was so short it seemed but a moment;
so long in its rich perfection that they both agreed if life brought no
further joy this was Enough.
Then they came down from the mountains and began living.
*
Day service is not so easily arranged on a ranch some miles from town.
They tried it for a while, the new runabout car bringing out a girl in
the morning early, and taking Diantha in to her office.
But motor cars are not infallible; and if it met with any accident there
was delay at both ends, and more or less friction.
Then Diantha engaged a first-class Oriental gentleman, well recommended
by the "vegetable Chinaman," on their own place. This was extremely
satisfactory; he did the work well, and was in all ways reliable; but
there arose in the town a current of malicious criticism and
protest--that she "did not live up to her principles."
To this she paid no attention; her work was now too well planted, too
increasingly prosperous to be weakened by small sneers.
Her mother, growing plumper now, thriving continuously in her new lines
of work, kept the hotel under her immediate management, and did
bookkeeping for the whole concern. New Union Home ran itself, and
articles were written about it in magazines; so that here and there in
other cities similar clubs were started, with varying success.
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