patient wife. Old Miss
Baker always liked Em; had told the minister three years ago that she
knew Em would make Lute a good Christian wife. They named the boy
Moses, after the old judge who was dead, and old Miss Baker said he
should have his gran'pa's watch when he got to be twenty-one.

Old Miss Baker always stuck by Em; may be she remembered how the old
judge had talked once on a time about his mother's cooking. For all
married men are, as I have said, idiotically cruel about that sort of
thing. Yes, old Miss Baker braced Em up wonderful; brought a lot of
dried catnip out west with her for the baby; taught Em how to make
salt-rising bread; told her all about stewing things and broiling
things and roasting things; showed her how to tell the real Yankee
codfish from the counterfeit--oh, she just did Em lots of good, did old
Miss Baker!

The rewards of virtue may be slow in coming, but they are sure to come.
Em's three boys--the three bouncing boys that came to Em and
Lute--those three boys waxed fat and grew up boisterous, blatant
appreciators of their mother's cooking. The way those boys did eat
mother's doughnuts! And mother's pies--wow! Other boys--the
neighbors' boys--came round regularly in troops, battalions, armies,
and like a consuming fire licked up the wholesome viands which Em's
skill and liberality provided for her own boys' enthusiastic playmates.
And all those boys--there must have been millions of 'em--were living,
breathing, vociferous testimonials to the unapproachable excellence of
Em's cooking.

Lute got into politics, and they elected him to the legislature. After
the campaign, needing rest, he took it into his head to run down east
to see his mother; he had not been back home for eight years. He took
little Moses with him. They were gone about three weeks. Gran'ma
Baker had made great preparations for them; had cooked up enough pies
to last all winter, and four plump, beheaded, well-plucked,
yellow-legged pullets hung stiff and solemn-like in the chill pantry
off the kitchen, awaiting the last succulent scene of all.

Lute and the little boy got there late of an evening. The dear old
lady was so glad to see them; the love that beamed from her kindly eyes
well nigh melted the glass in her silver-bowed specks. The table was
spread in the dining-room; the sheet-iron stove sighed till it seemed
like to crack with the heat of that hardwood fire.

"Why, Lute, you ain't eatin' enough to