"Then I'd go, you bet!" was Pearl's emphatic reply. "There's your
mother calling."

"Yes'm, I'm comin'. I'll help you, Tom. Keep a stout heart and all will
be well."

Pearl knew all about frustrated love. Ma had read a story once, called
"Wedded and Parted, and Wedded Again." Cruel and designing parents had
parted young Edythe (pronounced Ed'-ith-ee) and Egbert, and Egbert just
pined and pined and pined. How would Mrs. Motherwell like it if poor
Tom began to pine and turn from his victuals. The only thing that saved
Egbert from the silent tomb where partings come no more, was the old
doctor who used to say, "Keep a stout heart, Egbert, all will be well."
That's why she said it to Tom.

Edythe had eyes like stars, mouth like cherries, neck like a swan, and
a laugh like a ripple of music, and wasn't it strange, Nellie Slater
had, too? Pearl knew now why Tom chewed Old Chum tobacco so much. Men
often plunge into dissipation when they are crossed in love, and maybe
Tom would go and be a robber or a pirate or something; and then he
might kill a man and be led to the scaffold, and he would turn his
haggard face to the howling mob, and say, "All that I am my mother made
me." Say, wouldn't that make her feel cheap! Wouldn't that make a woman
feel like thirty cents if anything would. Here Pearl's gloomy
reflections overcame her and she sobbed aloud.

Mrs. Motherwell looked up apprehensively

"What are you crying for, Pearl?" she asked not unkindly.

Then, oh, how Pearl wanted to point her finger at Mrs. Motherwell, and
say with piercing clearness, the way a woman did in the book:

"I weep not for myself, but for you and for your children." But, of
course, that would not do, so she said:

"I ain't cryin'--much."

Pearl was grating horse-radish that afternoon, but the tears she shed
were for the parted lovers. She wondered if they ever met in the
moonlight and vowed to be true till the rocks melted in the sun, and
all the seas ran dry. That's what Egbert had said, and then a rift of
cloud passed athwart the moon's face, and Edythe fainted dead away
because it is bad luck to have a cloud go over the moon when people are
busy plighting vows, and wasn't it a good thing that Egbert was there
to break her fall? Pearl could just see poor Nellie Slater standing
dry-eyed and pale at the window wondering if Tom could get away from
his lynx-eyed parents who dogged his every footstep, and Pearl's tears
flowed afresh.

But Nellie