use I have never knowed anything else. But I believe that if
I had a home like this I would never go to the city and rush around with
the women with tired faces and loud voices that seem to be trying to
hurry to finish something before they die. I sometimes set and listen to
women who seem to be so busy doing nothing, and when I hear them say, "I
am rushed to death" or "I haven't time to do a thing," I wonder what
would happen if they didn't do it. What is the difference anyway? If
they died to-morrow they wouldn't care it wasn't done, and if they don't
die, they will have time to do it, if it is the thing to be done.

I am tired of it all. Mrs. Smith says I have been working too hard and I
am blue because I am tired. Anyway I want to get way down in a big easy
chair and watch the fire and hear the wind in the trees and once in a
while, hear the acorns as they drop on the roof. That is all the music I
want. I never want to hear an orchestra, and I am sure that some day I
will put my foot through the big drum that keeps time for the dancing. I
wish you liked the country, Kate, and we could get a little place and
have a pig and some chickens and a duck and I wouldn't never have to see
a pavement or a street light.

I am thinking of you, Kate, though I am awful tired.

_Nan_.

XXIII

_Dear Kate_:

I know you will be dead sore at me, but I could not do nothing else and
perhaps some day you will understand why I done it. Anyway, I have given
Billy his chance. He has got just as good a show as any boy of growing
up and being a good man, and he won't ever need to know that there are
such things as thieves and prisons. He'll learn to think of Mrs. Smith
as mother and he won't ever know that his real mother was in the stir.
He will think of his aunt Nan, as a little red headed girl who loved him
and brought him toys, and he won't never have bitterness or wickedness
come into his life through us. He is going away.

I will tell you all about it, so as you can get the worst of your
madness off before you come out, cause I know when you read this you
will want to kill me, and perhaps you will, but I don't care, I have
done the only thing I knew to do for Billy.

After Mrs. Smith's baby died, she wouldn't look at Billy for a long
time. Then she got to holding him and rocking him to sleep at night, and
after a while she couldn't let him out of her sight. I was awful glad,
cause I thought perhaps she would be always