Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/294

 and now, as she advanced with the air of a great lady slumming, Kate felt herself tingling.

"How do you do, my dear? " She extended a large hand with a brown cotton glove upon it.

Kate's hand remained at her side, as she said coldly:

"How do you do, Mrs. Taylor?"

Mrs. Taylor's manner said that it was the gracious act of an unsullied woman extending a hand to a fallen sister when she laid her brown cotton paw upon Kate's arm and quavered pityingly :

"You po-oo-or soul!"

"You stupid woman!" Kate's eyes at the momoit looked like steel points emitting sparks.

Mrs. Taylor drew herself up haughtily and was about to retort, but thought better of it. Instead, she declared with noble magnanimity:

"I am not angery. I have not been angery in thirty years. You are very rude, but I can rise above it and forgive you, because I realize you've had no raising."

"I hope," said Kate hotly, "that you realize also that you are not here by my invitation."

Mrs. Taylor looked as if she was not only about to forget that she was a saint but a lady, while Teeters had a sensation of being rent by feline claws.

It seemed like a direct intervention of Providence when Bowers hung out of the door of the wagon and called excitedly:

"I believe he's goin'!"

The exigencies of the moment, and curiosity, combined to make Mrs. Taylor overlook temporarily that she had been insulted, and she hastened with Teeters to the dying man's side.

Emaciated, yellow, MuUendore was lying with closed eyes when they entered.