with considered repression, but the weak-latched
door swung noiselessly open, and she was startled by her sister-in-law's
voice.

"NOW what's the matter with you? If you didn't like them beans--"

"No, no," Saxon explained hurriedly. "I'm just tired, that's all, and my
feet hurt. I wasn't hungry, Sarah. I'm just beat out."

"If you took care of this house," came the retort, "an' cooked an'
baked, an' washed, an' put up with what I put up, you'd have something
to be beat out about. You've got a snap, you have. But just wait." Sarah
broke off to cackle gloatingly. "Just wait, that's all, an' you'll
be fool enough to get married some day, like me, an' then you'll get
yours--an' it'll be brats, an' brats, an' brats, an' no more dancin',
an' silk stockin's, an' three pairs of shoes at one time. You've got a
cinch-nobody to think of but your own precious self--an' a lot of young
hoodlums makin' eyes at you an' tellin' you how beautiful your eyes
are. Huh! Some fine day you'll tie up to one of 'em, an' then, mebbe, on
occasion, you'll wear black eyes for a change."

"Don't say that, Sarah," Saxon protested. "My brother never laid hands
on you. You know that."

"No more he didn't. He never had the gumption. Just the same, he's
better stock than that tough crowd you run with, if he can't make a
livin' an' keep his wife in three pairs of shoes. Just the same he's
oodles better'n your bunch of hoodlums that no decent woman'd wipe her
one pair of shoes on. How you've missed trouble this long is beyond me.
Mebbe the younger generation is wiser in such thins--I don't know. But I
do know that a young woman that has three pairs of shoes ain't thinkin'
of anything but her own enjoyment, an' she's goin' to get hers, I can
tell her that much. When I was a girl there wasn't such doin's. My
mother'd taken the hide off me if I done the things you do. An' she
was right, just as everything in the world is wrong now. Look at your
brother, a-runnin' around to socialist meetin's, an' chewin' hot air,
an' diggin' up extra strike dues to the union that means so much bread
out of the mouths of his children, instead of makin' good with his
bosses. Why, the dues he pays would keep me in seventeen pairs of shoes
if I was nannygoat enough to want 'em. Some day, mark my words, he'll
get his time, an' then what'll we do? What'll I do, with five mouths to
feed an' nothin' comin' in?"

She stopped, out of breath but seething with the tirade yet to co