She is well off now, and lives no more in the
twelve-by-eighteen-foot bunk-house, but when I asked her how she
accomplished so much, she replied, "I just jollied things along,
and laughed over the hard places. It makes them easier then."
So perhaps the station agent's wife was really right, after all,
when she remarked that "some women were just born to laugh."
The Tenas Klootchman
[In Chinook language "Tenas Klootchman" means "girl baby."]
This story came to me from the lips of Maarda herself. It was hard
to realize, while looking at her placid and happy face, that Maarda
had ever been a mother of sorrows, but the healing of a wounded
heart oftentimes leaves a light like that of a benediction on a
receptive face, and Maarda's countenance held something greater
than beauty, something more like lovableness, than any other
quality.
We sat together on the deck of the little steamer throughout the
long violet twilight, that seems loath to leave the channels and
rocky of the Upper Pacific in June time. We had dropped easily
into conversation, for nothing so readily helps one to an
introduction as does the friendly atmosphere of the extreme West,
and I had paved the way by greeting her in the Chinook, to which
she responded with a sincere and friendly handclasp.
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