Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/86

Rh I couldn't answer! What should I do? For one could not spank them all, you know! And mother says that I ought not to teach anybody spelling, because I leave the u out of honor."

Altogether it was a letter which I could assure Mr. Taylor "sized up" very well with the letters written in my part of the United States. And it was signed, "Your very sincere spinster, Molly Stark Wood."

"I never seen honor spelled with a u," said Mr. Taylor, over whose not highly civilized head certain portions of the letter had lightly passed.

I told him that some old-fashioned people still wrote the word so.

"Either way would satisfy Bear Creek," said Mr. Taylor, "if she's otherwise up to requirements."

The Virginian was now looking over the letter musingly, and with awakened attention.

"'Your very sincere spinster,'" he read aloud slowly.

"I guess that means she's forty," said Mr. Taylor.

"I reckon she is about twenty," said the Virginian. And again he fell to musing over the paper that he held.

"Her handwriting ain't like any I've saw," pursued Mr. Taylor. "But Bear Creek would not object to that, provided she knows 'rithmetic and George Washington, and them kind of things."

"I expect she is not an awful sincere spinster," surmised the Virginian, still looking at the letter, still holding it as if it were some token.

Has any botanist set down what the seed of