ortley, my oldest boy'd 'a been twenty if
he'd lived--and I've buried two besides him. You'll know I've seen
trouble when I tell you that I've always thought we'd saved him and
Annie if we could 'a had another doctor that'd had more experience
with typhoid, and that's an awful thing to feel."

She paused a moment with somber eyes.

"I've worked hard since I was ten years old, and for the last five
years there's been nothin' but me between the children and the poor
house. You don't know much about that kind o' worry, Mr. Wortley,
an' 'taint likely you ever will. I was married when I was
nineteen--" Her eyes fell on the girl and softened lovingly, "'an
what that means in the country with seven children an' no help, an'
the winters what they are here, maybe you can guess a little. But I
tell you this: I ain't had the sorrow, all told, that's preparin'
for that girl, if you keep on like this. An' I wouldn't change my
lot for hers, nor would she, if she knew."

There was a dead silence in the room. Only the short, grunting
breaths of the sleeping dog stirred the air. The girl sat as if
turned to stone, her arm hard about Caroline; the boy stared
doubtfully at the woman, studying her plain, wrinkled face.

"I--I have plenty of money," he said, in a hollow thin little voice,
"she will always--"

"Money!" Luella's voice shook with scorn, "what's money? The Lord
knows, Mr. Wortley, I need money more'n you ever will, but let me
tell you there's things money can't buy. Can you buy children--nice
children like this one--to play with your children? Tell me that!"

"I shall never have any children," the girl's voice came in a husky,
strained whisper, "I shall be too--too miserable," she concluded
softly, and utterly to herself; she had absolutely forgotten the
others, even the boy, whose eyes turned incessantly from her face to
the older woman's.

Luella's shrewd glance enveloped the strong young figure. "I never
heard 't misery prevented 'em," she said dryly.

The boy seemed unable to move, so intense was the concentration of
his thoughts; his fingers stuck out stiffly in a purposeless, set
gesture.

"If it is true, all that we thought," he said slowly, "then no
hardship, no merely personal suffering should prevent ... the
experiment must be made ... must inevitably, _sometime_...."

"But not with her, not _her_, Mr. Wortley!" Luella cried. Her
expression turned quickly whimsical.

"You remind me o' me an' my mother o