Page:The New Penelope.djvu/74

 makes any one more or less mean; but it is more noticeable in men, who by nature and by custom are made independent. And so you were free at last?"

"Free and happy. I felt as light as a bird, and wondered I couldn't fly! I was poor; but that was nothing. My business was broken up; but I felt confidence in myself to begin again. My health, however, was very much broken down, and my friends said I needed change. That, with the desire to quit a country where I had suffered so much, determined me to come to California. It was the land of promise to my husband—the El Dorado he was seeking when he died. I always felt that if I had come here in the first place, my life would have been very different. So, finally, with the help of my kind friends I came."

"I should have felt, with your experience, no courage to undertake life among strangers, and they mostly men."

"On the contrary, I felt armed in almost every point. The fact of being a divorced woman was my only annoyance; but I was resolved to suppress it so far as I was able, and to represent myself to be, as I was, the widow of Mr. Greyfield. I took letters from my friends, to use in case of need; and with nothing but my child, and money enough to take me comfortably to the mines on the American River, left Oregon forever."

"To behold you as you are now, in this delightful home, it seems impossible that you should have gone through what you describe; and yet there must have been much more before you achieved the success here indicated."

"It was nothing—nothing at all compared with the other. I proceeded direct to the most populous mining town, hired a house, bought furniture on credit, and took boarders again. I kept only first-class boarders, had high prices—and succeeded."

"Did you never have the mining-stock fever, and invest and lose?"

"Not to any dangerous extent. One or two parties, in whose