the dinner, the cook cooked it, the butler carved it; all she had ever had to do with it was, to eat it, and go on being plump and pretty. As to dealing with the crude necessities of life, she had no idea how to set about it. But surely, you say, she could have learned? English ladies by the dozen learn to cook and clean and all the rest of it, before their first six months out here are up; and that without the aid of any magic, either; a little grit and gumption are all that is required. Grit and gumption—Alas! that was exactly what poor Eva had not got.
The circumstances of her marriage might lead one to imagine her a girl of unconventional nature, with more than the usual share of adventurousness and self-will; but nothing could be farther from the fact. It was upon her timidity, not her recklessness—not upon her “spirit,” but her lack of it—that her unmanly lover had played; and upon her tenderness. Tenderness, sweetness, grace—these were qualities that she possessed in overflowing measure; but the pioneer woman has need, too, of some of the manlier virtues, and of these poor Eva had not a trace. She was clinging, instead of self-reliant; she had daintiness and delicacy, but no capability; both in frame and nature she was only slender where her need was to be sturdy. Her very gifts were her hindrances, in this new way of life. In her right setting, she would have been a creature of exquisite charm; as a fragile flower is exquisite in a greenhouse, or a naked child in the warm arms of its mother. But a hothouse flower would soon look sadly tattered out here on the windy hills, and we bundle in thick
