She was secretly pleased at Gretchen's wonder and surprise at the new
country, but somehow she felt it her duty to talk querulously, and to
check the flow of the girl's emotions, which she did much to excite. Her
own life had been so circumscribed and hard that the day seemed to be too
bright to be speaking the truth. She peered into the sky for a cloud, but
there was none, on this dazzling Oregon morning. The trail now opened for
a long way before the eyes of the travelers. Far ahead gleamed the
pellucid waters of the Columbia, or Oregon. Half-way between them and the
broad, rolling river a dark, tall figure appeared.

"Gretchen?"

"What, mother?"

"Gretchen, look! There goes the Yankee schoolmaster. Came way out here
over the mountains to teach the people of the wilderness, and all for
nothing, too. That shows that people have souls--some people have. Walk
right along beside me, proper-like. You needn't ever tell any one that I
ain't your true mother. If I ain't ashamed of you, you needn't be ashamed
of me. I wish that you were my own girl, now that you have said that you
love me more than anybody else in the world. That remark kind o' touched
me. I know that I sometimes talk hard, but I mean well, and I have to tell
you the plain truth so as to do my duty by you, and then I won't have
anything to reflect upon.

"Just look at him! Straight as an arrow! They say that his folks are
rich. Come out here way over the mountains, and is just going to teach
school in a log school-house--all made of logs and sods and mud-plaster,
adobe they call it--a graduate of Harvard College, too."