Grandma walked over to the Sears cottage without any show of worry or hurry. But she wasn't smiling. Those gray eyes of hers were sparkling with something very different. And when Will Sears saw her coming in the gate he was both relieved and uncomfortably uneasy. She came right in and just looked at that desolate couple for a few seconds. Then: "Will Sears," she asked briefly, "what are you aiming to do about this?" Sears, who couldn't do anything, didn't know how to do anything about it but swear, said pompously: "What any decent, respectable, hard-working man would do,--bring back the girl and horsewhip that whippersnapper." Then Grandma, who knew just how much this sort of bluster was worth, let herself go. "Will Sears, if you honestly have an idea that you are a decent, respectable, hard-working man, hold on to it for the love of heaven, for you're the only human in this town that has any such notion." "I work," Sears began defiantly. "Oh, yes, Will, you work in a sort of a way; though I can remember the time when Green Valley folks thought you were going to be a big contractor. You promised well but somehow you never worked hard enough. You work at things now to keep your own miserable self alive, I guess, because when you get through using your week's wages there's hardly enough left to keep bare life and decency in your family." "I'm not a drunkard," Sears muttered, "and you know it." "No, you're not a drunkard, Will Sears, more's the pity. When it comes to choosing between a man who gets openly drunk and staggers down Main Street in drunken penitence to his wife and children and the man who drinks just enough to be a surly, selfish brute and yet look half-way respectable on the outside, why, give me the drunk every time. "You don't get drunk, only just full enough to have your family afraid and ashamed of you. You have made life a hateful, shameful, miserable existence for your wife and children. You've robbed them of every right and what pitiful little possessions, hopes and plans they'd been able to find for themselves. That's why John's in Alaska, Jimmy in the army and Alice an eighteen-year-old wife. A precious father you've been to make your children choose the bitter snows, the jungle and a doubtful future with a stranger to life with you, their father." "I've fed my children and clothed them," again muttered Sears. "Yes, Will, you have. But--man, man--it takes more than just blood, three begrudged meals a day and a skimpy calico dress to prove real fatherhood. But I'm not blaming you any more than I'm blaming this wife of yours.