where to find water when they wanted it. But thou sayest truly,"
he added, with a sigh, "that was before streams and rain were
choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with their spume. Go on,
friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in a seemly fashion,
and not with impious earthquakes of devilish gunpowder."

With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian
shaft. Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the
work went on slowly. The market garden did not suffer meantime, as
Mulrady had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder
tillage, while he superintended the engineering work of the well.
This trifling incident marked an epoch in the social condition of
the family. Mrs. Mulrady at once assumed a conscious importance
among her neighbors. She spoke of her husband's "men"; she alluded
to the well as "the works"; she checked the easy frontier
familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary Mulrady, her
seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple Alvin Mulrady looked with
astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all
feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity.
"Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys
that want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of 'em may be
makin' up to her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady,"
responded Mrs. Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever
thought of givin' your daughter to a common miner, or that I'm
goin' to allow her to marry out of our own set?" "Our own set!"
echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her in astonishment, and then
glancing hurriedly across at his freckle-faced son and the two
Chinamen at work in the cabbages. "Oh, you know what I mean," said
Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move in. The Alvarados and
their friends! Doesn't the old Don come here every day, and ain't