"No, it’s not puttin’ money in the childern, makes me sore," Martha continued, "it’s when we scraped an’ screwed a few dollars together for a nest-egg, an’ then, in the turn o’ a hand, it’s gone—to pay for somethin’ we never owed, nor no one got any good out of, but the wrong fella." "You mean you’ve been doing something foolish? Speculating? Losing money?" demanded Madam Crewe abruptly. "My husban’ signed a paper for his brother, an’ it let’m in for all we had put by. I was wonderin’ if the paper I signed here early in the summer, I was wonderin’ if _that_ had a sting in it, too? An’ if so, how much?" "I don’t understand." "I mean, the paper I signed here the time Eunice Youngs an’ me both set our names to it together." "That paper was my will, woman. It had nothing to do with you." "That’s what Sam told me, but—I——" "You could not be called upon to pay one copper because of what you did that day. On the contrary—— No! Never mind! What have you stood to lose through your husband’s foo——" "He wasn’t any foolisher’n me," Martha anticipated her quickly. "Your husband’s misfortune," amended Madam Crewe. "Two-hunderd-and-fifty dollars. All we had saved. But we’ll set about right over again, an’ if we have luck, we can put by some more. An’ anyhow, I’m thankful there won’t be another such call on us. That was what I kinda had on my mind when I come." "Well, you can shift it off your mind. I give you my word. You believe me, don’t you?" "Yes’m." "And I believe you. So far we understand each other. Now, Slawson, I am going to prove that I trust you. I am going to ask you an honest question. I want an honest answer." "Yes’m." "You are the mother of four children. You have had experience in bringing them up right. I have had one child—one grandchild. I have brought them both up—_wrong_. What’s the trouble?" Martha did not reply at once. Madam Crewe waited patiently, making no attempt to hurry her, and the room was as still as if it had been empty. At last Martha spoke. "O’ course I d’know what the trouble was, if there was any, with your boy. But it seems to me, I see where you kind o’ slipped up on it with Miss Katherine." "Well?" "Firstoff, the way I look at it, childern is all selfish, which is only to say they’re human, like the rest of us. They’re selfish an’ they’re mischeevious, an’ they’re contrairy, for, when all’s said an’ done, they’re—childern. What we want to do is, learn’m not to be selfish an’ mischeevious an’ contrairy. An’ how can we learn’m not to be it, if we’re that way ourselves? There’s a lady I usedta work out for—(you know her—Mrs. Sherman, Mr. Frank Ronald’s sister). She give her boy every bloomin’ thing money could buy——. But she never give’m a square deal. You can take it from me, what a young ’un respec’s is a square deal. He mayn’t _like_ it, but he respec’s it. An’ _you_ for givin’ it to’m.