The world is full of
such, and the frontier is their gathering-place. Mrs. Austin had
met a number of men like Law, and to her they seemed to be the
true soldiers of fortune--fellows who lived purely for the fun of
living, and leavened their days with adventure. They were buoyant
souls, for the most part, drifting with the tide, resentful of
authority and free from care; meeting each day with enthusiastic
expectancy for what it held in store. They were restless and
improvident; the world counted them ne'er-do-wells, and yet she
knew that at least their hours were full and that their names--
some of them--were written large in the distant places. Alaire
Austin often told herself that, had she been born a man, such a
life as this might have been hers, and she took pleasure in
dreaming sometimes of the experience that fate, in such a case,
would have brought to her.
Being a woman, however, and being animated at this particular
moment by a peculiarly feminine impulse, she felt urged to add her
own touch to what nature had roughed out. This man had been denied
what she termed an education; therefore she decided to put one in
his way.
"Do you like to read?" she asked him.
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