[Sidenote: "Old Maids"]

The arbitrary social distinctions, made regardless of personality, are
often cruelly ironical. Many a man, incapable by nature of life-long
devotion to one woman, becomes a husband in half an hour, duly
sanctioned by Church and State. A woman who remains unmarried, because,
with fine courage, she will have her true mate or none, is called "an
old maid." She may have the heart of a wife and the soul of a mother,
but she cannot escape her sinister label. The real "old maids" are of
both sexes, and many are married, but alas! seldom to each other.

[Sidenote: A Grievance]

In his introspective moments, Roger Austin sometimes wondered why
marriage, maternity, and bereavement should have left no trace upon his
mother. The uttermost depths of life had been hers for the sounding, but
Miss Mattie had refused to drop her plummet overboard and had spent the
years in prolonged study of her own particular boat.

She came in, with the irritating air of a martyr, and clucked sharply
with her false teeth when she saw that her son was reading.

"I don't know what I've done," she remarked, "that I should have to live
all the time with people who keep their noses in books. Your pa was
forever readin' and you're marked with it. I could set here and set here
and set here, and he took no more notice of me than if I was a piece of
furniture. When he died, the brethren and sistern used to come to
condole with me and say how I must miss him. There wasn't nothin' to
miss, 'cause the books and his chair was left. I've a good mind to burn
'em all up."

"I won't read if you don't want me to, Mother," answered Roger, laying
his book aside regretfully.

"I dunno but what I'd rather you would than to want to and not," she
retorted, somewhat obscurely. "What I'm a-sayin' is that it's in the
blood and you can't help it. If I'd known it was your pa's intention to
give himself up so exclusive to readin', I'd never have married him,
that's all I've got to say. There's no sense in it. Lemme see what
you're at now."

She took the open book, that lay face downward upon the table, and read
aloud, awkwardly:

"Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the
births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk
of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected."

[Sidenote: Peculiar Way of Putting Things]

"Now," she demanded, in a shrill voice, "what does that mean?"

"I don'