Don't touch me!" Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet--the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before--she broke down and cried on my shoulder.

She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known.

She wished to God she were a man like me.

The only way I could stop her was to tell her that her face ought to be washed; when I said that to her, she stopped her sitheing and soon began making herself pretty: and she was quite gay on the road to my place, where I took them because I couldn't think of anything else to do with them, though I knew that the whole family, not counting Rowena, couldn't or wouldn't do enough work to pay the board of their horse.
3 They hadn't more than got there and eaten a solid meal, than Surajah asked me for tools so he could work on a patent mouse-trap he was inventing, and when I came in from work that evening, he was explaining it to Magnus Thorkelson, who had come over to borrow some sugar from me.
Magnus was pretending to listen, but he was asking his questions of Rowena, who stood by more than half convinced that Surrager had finally hit upon his great idea--which was a mouse-trap that would always be baited, and with two compartments, one to catch the mice, and one to hold them after they were caught.

When they went into the second compartment, they tripped a little lever which opened the door for a new captive, and at the same time baited the trap again.
It seemed as if Magnus could not understand what Surajah said, but that Rowena's speech was quite plain to him.