Can I see your mother ?" She stopped and looked at me with a singular expression.

Then she said sharply:-- "You know, fust rate, she's dead." She was turning away again, but I think she must have seen my concern in my face, for she hesitated.

"But," I said quickly, "I certainly understood your father, that is, Mr.Johnson," I added, interrogatively, "to say that--that I was to speak to"-- I didn't like to repeat the exact phrase--"his WIFE." "I don't know what he was playin' ye for," she said shortly.

"Mar has been dead mor'n a year." "But," I persisted, "is there no grown-up woman here ?" "No." "Then who takes care of you and the children ?" "I do." "Yourself and your father--eh ?" "Dad ain't here two days running, and then on'y to sleep." "And you take the entire charge of the house ?" "Yes, and the log tallies." "The log tallies ?" "Yes; keep count and measure the logs that go by the slide." It flashed upon me that I had passed the slide or declivity on the hillside, where logs were slipped down into the valley, and I inferred that Johnson's business was cutting timber for the mill.
"But you're rather young for all this work," I suggested.
"I'm goin' on sixteen," she said gravely.
Indeed, for the matter of that, she might have been any age.

Her face, on which sunburn took the place of complexion, was already hard and set.
But on a nearer view I was struck with the fact that her eyes, which were not large, were almost indistinguishable from the presence of the most singular eyelashes I had ever seen.