The Fighting Shepherdess

"What is there to say, Jap?" meekly. "I see he refused you."

"Refused me? He insulted me!"

Mrs. Toomey looked hurt.

"What did he say, Jap?"

"He offered me fifteen dollars a week to clerk."

Toomey resented fiercely the pleased and hopeful expression on his wife's face, and added: "I suppose you'd like to see me cutting calico and fishing salt pork out of the brine?"

She ventured timidly: "I thought you might take it until something worth while turned up."

"Maybe," he sneered, "I could get a job swamping in 'Tinhorn's' place--washing fly specks off the windows and sweeping out."

"Of course, you're right, Jap," conciliatingly, but she sighed unconsciously as she went back to her work.

Toomey paced the floor for a time, then sank into his usual place on the sofa. Mrs. Toomey permitted herself to observe sarcastically: "It's a wonder to me you don't get bed sores--the amount of time you spend on the flat of your back."

"What do you mean by that?" suspiciously. "Do you mean I'm lazy because I didn't take that job?"

Since she made no denial, conversation ceased, and the silence was broken only by the sound of her scissors upon the table and the howling of the gale.

He smoked cigarette after cigarette in gloomy thought, finally getting up and going to a closet off the kitchen.

"What are you looking for, Jap?" she called as she heard him rummaging.

He did not reply, but evidently found what he sought for he came out presently carrying a shotgun.

"Are you going to try and raffle that?"

Still he did not deign to answer, but preserved his injured air, and getting once more into his hat and coat started off with the martyred manner of a man who has been driven from home.

Mrs. Toomey finally threw down her scissors with a gesture of despair. She was too nervous to do any more. The wind, her anxious thoughts, the exacting task of cutting a suit from an inadequate amount of cloth, was a combination that proved to be too much. She glanced at the clock on the bookcase--only three o'clock! Actually there seemed forty-eight hours in days like this. She stood uncertainly for a moment, then determination settled on her tense worried face. Why put it off any longer? It must be done sooner or later--she was sure of that. Besides, nothing ever was as hard as one anticipates. This was a cheering thought, and the lines in Mrs. Toomey's forehead smoothed out as she stood before the mirror buttoning her coat and tying a veil over her head.

It took no small amount of physical courage for a person of Mrs. Toomey's frailty to face such a gale. But with her thin lips in a determined line and her gaze straight ahead, she managed, by tacking judiciously and stopping at intervals to clasp a telephone pole while she recovered her breath, to reach the iron fence imported from Omaha which gave such a look of exclusiveness to the Pantins' residence.