"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'