"Mother to her three little ones," says Minna. Then she says again quick: "Why, what's the matter, Mr. Gale?" For Homer seemed to have been took bad. "Great Godfrey!" he says, hardly able to get his voice. "And, of course, you won't mind my saying it," Minna goes on, "because you seem so broad-minded about children, but when I taught primary in Red Gap last year those three little boys of hers gave me more trouble than any other two dozen of the pests in the whole room." Homer couldn't say anything this time. He looked like a doctor was knifing him without anesthetics. "And to make it worse," says Minna, "the mother is so crazy about them, and so sensitive about any little thing done to them in the way of discipline--really, she has very little control of her language where those children are concerned. Still, of course, that's how any good mother will act, to be sure; and especially when they have no father. "I'm glad indeed the poor woman is to have someone like you that will take the responsibility off her shoulders, because those boys are now at an age where discipline counts. Of course she'll expect you to be gentle with them, even though firm. Oswald--he's eleven now, I believe--will soon be old enough to send to reform school; but the younger ones, seven and nine--My! such spirits as they have! They'll really need someone with strength." Homer was looking as if this bright chatter would add twenty years to his age. He'd slumped down on the stoop, where he'd been setting, like he'd had a stroke. "So she's that kind, is she?" he kind of mutters. "A good thing I found it out on her!" "The children live with their grandmother in Red Gap while their mother is away," says Minna. "They really need a strong hand." "Not mine!" says Homer. Then he got slowly up and staggered down a few steps toward the gate. "It's a good thing I found out this scandal on her in time," says he. "Talk about underhandedness! Talk about a woman hiding her guilty secret! Talk about infamy! I'll expose her, all right. I'm going straight to her and tell her I know all. I'll make her cower in shame!" He's out on his horse with his reckless threat. "Now you've sunk the ship," I says to Minna. "I knew the woman was leading a double life as fur as Homer was concerned, but I wasn't going to let on to the poor zany. It's time he was speared, and this would of been a judgment on him that his best friends would of relished keenly. Lots of us was looking forward to the tragedy with great pleasure. You spoiled a lot of fun for the valley." "But it would not have been right," says Minna. "It would truly have been the blackest of tragedies to a man of Mr. Gale's sensitive fibres. You can't enter into his feelings because you never taught primary. Also, I think he is very far from being a poor zany, as you have chosen to call him." The poor thing was warm and valiant when she finished this, looking like Joan of Arc or someone just before the battle.