Saxon dreamed over it in a maze of incoherent thought. This was
concrete. This she understood. This she worshiped as man-created
gods have been worshiped on less tangible evidence of their
sojourn on earth.
Twenty-two inches it measured around. She knew it out of many
verifications. She stood up and put it about her waist. This was
part of the ritual. It almost met. In places it did meet. Without
her dress it would meet everywhere as it had met on her mother.
Closest of all, this survival of old California-Ventura days
brought Saxon in touch. Hers was her mother's form. Physically,
she was like her mother. Her grit, her ability to turn off work
that was such an amazement to others, were her mother's. Just so
had her mother been an amazement to her generation--her mother,
the toy-like creature, the smallest and the youngest of the
strapping pioneer brood, who nevertheless had mothered the brood.
Always it had been her wisdom that was sought, even by the
brothers and sisters a dozen years her senior. Daisy, it was, who
had put her tiny foot down and commanded the removal from the
fever flatlands of Colusa to the healthy mountains of Ventura;
who had backed the savage old Indian-fighter of a father into a
corner and fought the entire family that Vila might marry the man
of her choice; who had flown in the face of the family and of
community morality and demanded the divorce of Laura from her
criminally weak husband; and who on the other hand, had held the
branches of the family together when only misunderstanding and
weak humanness threatened to drive them apart.
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