erence," Elizabeth replied positively. "The
longer I look at it the more convinced I am that the whole thing hinges
right on that point. If we live together again I'll know that it isn't
because he feels that having married me he must keep me in food and
clothes, and he'll know that it's because I want to and not because I've
got a child to be supported. I believe I love him; but if I didn't know I
could leave him in a minute if he made me do things that I wasn't able to
do I wouldn't dare to say yes. Knowing that I don't have to live with him
if he begins to order me around, I think I'll try it."

"You're a queer girl, Lizzie," the mother said, puzzled and uncertain what
to think of the philosophy she propounded. "You don't seem to be afraid of
men at all."

"I don't have to be, ma, because no man will ever again pay for my food
and clothes. You are not to tell anybody, even the boys. I may not do it
yet. I didn't intend to tell you for a while, but you insisted on telling
me what I was thinking about, and it popped right out at you."

Elizabeth gave her mother a tender look and added: "I told you first when
he asked me before," which was a thing her mother could understand and
appreciate. Elizabeth was considerate of the little mother whose life was
hard, and who was afraid of a man.

At that point Elizabeth fell into a brown study. She argued for her own
rights, knowing that only on that path could peace come to either herself
or John, but she did not feel herself wholly worthy, and John wholly
unworthy; she knew her weaknesses, and she knew she had wronged John
Hunter as well as he had wronged her; she was willing to take him if he
would be as willing to correct his faults and confess them as she was
willing to do. She did not ask of John Hunter that he be always right in
his actions toward her, but that he discuss their grievances and let them
look together for better ways of settling what was right for each. She was
so deep in her own thoughts that she did not hear Jack, who called to her
from the door:

"Mamma, let's go! Come on! They're going right now, mamma!"

Elizabeth did not hear the child till he tugged at her skirts and
exclaimed:

"Come on, mamma! Grandma won't care. Come on!"

His mother looked down at the boy with a smile. How well she remembered
the delights of threshing-day herself. She looked about the kitchen to see
what had yet to be done.

"Wait a little, Jack. I've got to help get the