gh it was well worth writing.
Now she came in sight, walking across the open toward the camp. She was
wearing jodphurs and carrying her rifle. The two boys had a Tommie slung and they were
coming along behind her. She was still a good-looking woman, he thought, and she had a
pleasant body. She had a great talent and appreciation for the bed, she was not pretty, but
he liked her face, she read enormously, liked to ride and shoot and, certainly, she drank
too much. Her husband had died when she was still a comparatively young woman and for
a while she had devoted herself to her two just-grown children, who did not need her and
were embarrassed at having her about, to her stable of horses, to books, and to bottles. She
liked to read in the evening before dinner and she drank Scotch and soda while she read.
By dinner she was fairly drunk and after a bottle of wine at dinner she was usually drunk
enough to sleep.