Wednesday repeated the trials of Tuesday with a few disagreeable variations, and Thursday was no better than Wednesday. By Thursday night Mary had abandoned all hope of finishing her own sewing before May Meeting Sunday. Her one aim now was to do a small amount of housework each day and get three meals cooked for John and the children, and even this work had to be subordinated to the increasing demands of the dressmaking business. At times she had a strange feeling in her head, and wondered if this was what people meant when they spoke of having headache; but sleep, "the balm of every woe", seldom failed to come nightly to her pillow, and all day long her sweet serenity never failed, even when the trying week was fitly rounded out by a simultaneous visit from Sally McElrath and Ma Harris. Sally had just "dropped in", but Ma Harris came, as usual, with intent to find or to make trouble. Ma Harris was John Crawford's "mother-in-law on his first wife's side", as Dave Amos phrased it, and it was the opinion of the neighbors that if John and his second wife had not been the best-natured people in the world, they never could have put up with Ma Harris and her "ways." She had exercised a careful supervision over John's domestic affairs during the first wife's lifetime. When Sarah died, she redoubled her vigilance, and when his second marriage became an impending certainty, Ma Harris's presence and influence hung like a dark cloud over the future of the happy pair. "There's only one thing I'm afraid of, Mary," said honest John. "I know you'll get along all right with me and the children, but I don't know about Ma Harris; I'm afraid she'll give you trouble." "Don't you worry about that," said Mary cheerily. "I've never seen anybody yet that I couldn't get along with, and Ma Harris won't be the exception." Popular sentiment declared that Ma Harris took her son-in-law's second marriage much harder than she had taken her daughter's death. Her lamentations were loudly and impartially diffused among her acquaintances; but it was evident that the sympathies of the community were not with John's "mother-in-law on his first wife's side." "I reckon old Mis' Harris won't bother me again soon," said Maria Taylor. "She was over here yesterday with her handkerchief to her eyes, mournin' over John marryin' Mary Parrish, and I up and told her that she ought to be givin' thanks for such a stepmother for Sarah's children, John Crawford was too good a man, anyhow, to be wasted on a pore, shiftless creature like Sarah, and her death was nothin' but a blessin' to John and the children."