He pushed back the dishes and settled down at the table to read, still so distracted that by mistake, he opened Frances and the Irrepressibles and for some moments stared stupidly at the pictures of little girls in hair ribbons and white party dresses and high button shoes before he realized, with an outburst of wounded dignity, that this was not Riders of the Purple Sage.

Just as he had thought I deliberately broke his pipe, now he thought I had mischievously substituted my book for his, not only to insult him with its childishness but to remind him that he could not read English well and that I could. He strode across the room and plucked me to my feet. “I’ve had enough of your monkey business.” He turned me around and hit me four or five times on the backside. I did not cry out but my tears continued to fall and I felt giddy as the blows stung me through my thin skirt. The action satisfied him and he drew his chair to the fire and began to read. I collapsed once more into my corner, pondering how I could avenge myself.

Probably from his frequent readings of this book, my father longed to see the west and one time, some years before, when he had made a little extra money carrying trunks at the Hotel, he bought a fine yellow hide and made a pair of cowboy boots which he sometimes wore on Sunday. As he read, I could tell by the pleasure that illuminated his face and caused him now and then to chuckle deeply in his throat, that he was far away from me and that the world in which he rode a pinto cow-pony or a roan mare contained no blubbering, angry child nor any sullen, pregnant woman. Once he paused and swung an invisible lariat over his head, leaned forward on his horse’s neck as to its flanks he pressed spurs with tied rowels. A little later, he whipped a revolver from his holster and aimed at the empty caviar can. Then, conscious once more of where he was, he kicked the stove in vexation and scratched his head.