married to
Joe Rainey, her husband; and then you saw a lot of writin' on fences and
sidewalks and on the schoolhouse walls; and some of the girls and boys
said funny things sometimes. All the time it was plain enough that there
couldn't be a family without a father as well as a mother; the father
havin' to earn money, and the mother havin' to take care of the
children, and of course no children where there were no father and
mother, except orphans and things like that. Mitch and me talked this
over and he said that if any boy said any dirty thing to me, to hit him
one; and that if I'd come up some night, his pa would explain to me
about flowers and plants and show me what a wonderful thing flowers are
and how they mean everything when understood. And then he began to talk
of Zueline Hasson, and how she made him feel so happy and so in love
with everything, just because she was so beautiful, and her friendship
was so beautiful to him.

Then Mitch wanted to know if I'd heard that this Mr. Hedges was marryin'
Nellie Bennett for her money, and had come down from Chicago to get her
for her pa's money. I had heard my pa say that; and Mitch said, "I
believe it--there was too much splurge over there, and why wasn't some
man right here in this town good enough for Nellie?" After a while pa
and ma came home, and Mitch hearin' 'em slipped out, and I was up-stairs
by the time they came up, with my light out. So I heard pa and ma talk
in the next room.

Pa said: "Yep, you'll see it before six months. Mr. Bennett don't know
any more about runnin' a store than the man who got his farm knows about
runnin' a farm, which is nothin'. When men change their game, this way,
they always lose. And that ain't all. Mr. Bennett is topplin' now. His
house is mortgaged and he's hard up. But a fine house is always a bait
to young men; and old folks always put out a bait in order to marry
their daughters off."

Ma said: "Nothin' of the kind. They don't have to put out any bait. Look
at you--was there any bait about me?"

"No," says pa.

"Of course there wasn't," said ma. "And you went around sayin' it would
kill you if I didn't marry you--and besides I have your letters for it."

"Oh, well," says pa, "a fellow always does that."

"Yes," ma said, "you're right, a fellow always does that, bait or no
bait. And I think the way you talk about marriage sometimes is just
awful, and if the children heard you, you'd be raisin' up children that
suspi