Mrs. Owen did not sigh at the thought of her burdens, but smiled quite
cheerfully as though the fact of the world's being a busy place was
wholly agreeable. She sat down beside Sylvia in the window-seat and took
one of the cakes and nibbled it while they talked. Sylvia had never been
so wholly at ease in her life. It was as though she had been launched
into the midst of an old friendship, and she felt that she had conferred
the greatest possible favor in consenting to visit this house, for was
not this dear old lady saying,--

"You see, I'm lonesome sometimes and I almost kidnap people to get them
to visit me. I'm a terribly practical old woman. If you haven't heard it
I must tell you the truth--I'm a farmer! And I don't let anybody run my
business. Other widows have to take what the lawyers give them; but
while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I'm going to handle
my own money. We women are a lot of geese, I tell you, child! I'm
treasurer of a lot of things women run, and I can see a deficit through
a brick wall as quick as any man on earth. Don't you ever let any man
vote any proxy for you--you tell 'em you'll attend the stockholders'
meetings yourself, and when you go, kick!"

Sylvia had not the faintest notion of what proxy meant, but she was sure
it must be something both interesting and important or Mrs. Owen would
not feel so strongly about it.

"When I was your age," Mrs. Owen continued, "girls weren't allowed to
learn anything but embroidery and housekeeping. But my father had some
sense. He was a Kentucky farmer and raised horses and mules. I never
knew anything about music, for I wouldn't learn; but I own a stock farm
near Lexington, and just between ourselves I don't lose any money on it.
And most that I know about men I learned from mules; there's nothing in