This quality, however fatal to her higher growth, had given her a peculiar capacity for business which endeared her to her uncle.

Familiar with the strong passions and prejudices of men, she had none of those feminine meannesses, a wholesome distrust of which had kept her uncle a bachelor.
It was not strange, therefore, that when he died two years ago it was found that he had left her his entire property, real and personal, limited only by a single condition.

She was to undertake the vocation of a "sole trader," and carry on the business under the name of "J.
Forsyth." If she married, the estate and property was to be held distinct from her husband's, inalienable under the "Married Woman's Property Act," and subject during her life only to her own control and personal responsibilities as a trader.
The intense disgust and discomfiture of her parents, who had expected to more actively participate in their brother's fortune, may be imagined.
But it was not equal to their fury when Josephine, instead of providing for them a separate maintenance out of her abundance, simply offered to transfer them and her brother to her own house on a domestic but not a business equality.

There being no alternative but their former precarious shiftless life in their "played-out" claim in the valley, they wisely consented, reserving the sacred right of daily protest and objurgation.

In the economy of Burnt Ridge Ranch they alone took it upon themselves to represent the shattered domestic altar and its outraged Lares and Penates.