"You see," Mary said to Bert. "Having her own way and leading him
by the nose already."

Saxon acknowledged the sting.

"Anyway you want, Billy," she surrendered. His arms tightened
about her.

"We'll talk it over first, I guess."



CHAPTER XIV

Sarah was conservative. Worse, she had crystallized at the end of
her love-time with the coming of her first child. After that she
was as set in her ways as plaster in a mold. Her mold was the
prejudices and notions of her girlhood and the house she lived
in. So habitual was she that any change in the customary round
assumed the proportions of a revolution. Tom had gone through
many of these revolutions, three of them when he moved house.
Then his stamina broke, and he never moved house again.

So it was that Saxon had held back the announcement of her
approaching marriage until it was unavoidable. She expected a
scene, and she got it.

"A prizefighter, a hoodlum, a plug-ugly," Sarah sneered, after
she had exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own
future and the future of her children in the absence of Saxon's