"We was married just like anybody; we didn't make no secret of it; we've
lived together four years. Are you goin' to unlive them years by stoppin'
now?"

"Don't you s'pose I been over all that a million times? My mind's sore
workin' with it; there ain't a thought in me that don't ache from it. But
David's right. We've got to part. I put your things in this poke here,"
she said, and she gave him a bag made from an old pillow tick, with a few
clothes lumping it half full. "I'll carry the baby, Laban." She pulled
back from him with the child in her arms. "Or no, you can carry her;
you'll have to leave her, too, and you've got a right to all the good you
can get of her now. Don't touch anything. I'll stay at David's, tonight,
but I'll come back in the morning, and then I'll see what I'll do--stay,
or go and live with David. Come!"

"And what about Joey?" Laban asked, half turning with the child when they
were outside.

"I declare I forgot about Joey! I'll see, to-morrow. It seems as if my
very soul was tired now.

"Joey will just think we've gone over to David's for a minute; he'll go to
bed when he comes; he'll have had his supper at Peter Hingston's, anyway."

As they walked away, she said, "You're a good man, Laban Billings, to feel
the way you always do about Joey. You've been a true father to him; I
wonder what his _own_ father'd have been."

"No truer father to him than I've been a husband to you, Nancy," the man
said, and as they walked along together, so far apart, his speech came to