Page:The Night Born (London,1913).djvu/38

And inside, wrapped in oiled silk, yellowed with age and worn and thumbed, was the original scrap of newspaper containing the quotation from Thoreau.

" 'And are you happy? . . . satisfied?' I asked her. 'With a quarter of a million you would n't have to work down in the States. You must miss a lot.'

"'Not much,' she answered. 'I would n't swop places with any woman down in the States. These are my people; this is where I belong. But there are times—' and in her eyes smoldered up that hungry yearning I 've mentioned—'there are times when I wish most awful bad for that Thoreau man to happen along.'

"'Why?' I asked.

"'So as I could marry him. I do get mighty lonesome at spells. I 'm just a woman—a real woman. I 've heard tell of the other kind of women that gallivanted off like me and did queer things—the sort that become soldiers in armies and sailors on ships. But those women are queer themselves. They're more like men than women; they look like men and they don't have ordinary women's needs. They don't want love, nor little children in their arms and around their