I suspect that the worst that grandma ever believed, was that Gowdy swore or used what she called vulgar language in Virginia's presence.

Knowing him as we all did afterward, we suspected that he attempted to treat her as he treated all women--and as I believe he could not help treating them.

It seems impossible of belief--his wife's orphan sister, the recent death of Ann Gowdy, the girl's helplessness and she only a little girl; but Buck Gowdy was Buck Gowdy, and that escape of his wife's sister and her flight over the prairie was the indelible black mark against him which was pointed at from time to 'time forever after whenever the people were ready to forgive those daily misdoings to which a frontier people were not so critical as perhaps they should have been.

Indeed he gained a certain popularity from his boast that all the time he needed to gain control over any woman was half an hour alone with her--but of that later, if at all.
"That was me that called you 'Virginia,'" said I."I want to get into the wagon to get things for breakfast--after you get up." "I never thought of your calling me Virginia," she answered--and I had no idea what was in her mind.

I saw no reason why I shouldn't call her by her first name.