Page:The New Penelope.djvu/108

 me, and in his peculiar nasal tones, "you can guess whether a young man, used to the mountains, as I was, and who had been disappointed and jilted as I had been, enjoyed this sort of thing or not. It wasn't in my line, you see, this entertaining goddesses; though, doubtless, in this way, before now, men have entertained angels unawares. You shall judge whether I did.

"What with reading, eating together, singing—she sang 'Kate Kearney' for me, and her voice was glorious—our acquaintance ripened very fast. Finally, I conquered my embarrassment so far as to ask her some questions about herself, and she told me that she was of a good New England family, raised in affluence, well educated, accomplished, but by a freak of fortune, reduced to poverty: that she had come to California resolved to get money, and had got it. She went from camp to camp of the miners with stationery, and other trifling articles needed by them; sold them these things, wrote letters for them, sang to them, nursed them when sick, or carried letters express to San Francisco, to be mailed. For all these services, she received high prices, and had also had a good deal of gold given to her in specimens. I asked her if she liked that kind of a life, so contrary to her early training. She answered me: 'It's not what we choose that we select to do in this world, but what chooses us to do it. I have made a competency, and gained a rich and varied experience. If life is not what I once dreamed it was, I am content.' But she sighed as she said it, and I couldn't believe in her content."

"You have not told us yet what motives brought her to you," I remarked, in an interval of silence.

"No; she hadn't told me herself, then. By and by, I asked her, in my green kind of way, what brought her to see me. I never shall forget the smile with which she turned to answer me. We were sitting quite close: it never was in my nature, when once acquainted with a