Martha smiled. "Believe _me_, you don’t know what you’re equal to, an’ don’t you forget it. No more do I. We ain’t done up in bags, like seven pounds o’ sugar, we human bein’s, so’s we know what we’re equal to. The heft of us comes out, accordin’ to the things in life we got to measure up to. When I was married, firstoff, I thought I wasn’t _equal_ to livin’ with my mother-in-law, an’ puttin’ up with her peculiar-rarities. But, laws o’ man! I found I was. An’, what’s more, I found I been equal to one or two other little things since, worse than her, by a good sight. What helped me some, was realizin’ I got peculiar-rarities of my own other folks has to be equal to." Katherine caught her under lip between her teeth, as if to hold back words trying to come out. A minute, and they came. "But, I don’t see why some people have a right to make others unhappy." "They haven’t. No more than a body has a right to make herself unhappy. But they do it, all the same." "One wouldn’t mind making one big sacrifice, or two, or three, in a lifetime, if that were all. But, it seems, nothing is ever enough. You think you’ve vanquished one thing, and, before you know it, you’ve got it all to do over again. Has your life been that way, Mrs. Slawson? Does one never get through having to give up one’s own wishes and will to the wishes and will of others?" Mrs. Slawson stirred in silence for a moment the delicious brew simmering on the stove. "Did you ever scrub a floor?" she asked, at length. "No, o’ course you didn’t. Mostly, ladies thinks scrubbin’ floors is dretful low work. Well, it ain’t. Scrubbin’ floors’ll learn you a lot o’ other things, if you let it. In the first place, there’s a right an’ wrong way to it, same’s there is to tonier jobs. If you’re goin’ to begrutch your elbow grease, an’ ain’t willin’ to get down on your marra-bones, an’ attend strictly to business, you ain’t goin’ to succeed. Well, we’ll say, you scrubbed a spot, good an’ clean. That ain’t all. You got to keep goin’ back on yourself, scrubbin’ back over the places where you left off, else there’ll be streaks, an’ when your floor dries on you, the streaks’ll show up, for all they’re worth, an’ give you dead away. As I make it out, it’s just the same with livin’. If you begrutch takin’ pains, an’ keep your eye out, all the time, for fear you’ll do a little more’n your share, why, you can take it from me, you’re goin’ to show streaks. You better never done it at all, than done it so’s it’ll be a dead give-away on you. You can’t scrub clean with dirty water, an’ you can’t _live_ clean, ’less you keep turnin’ out all the messy feelin’s you got in you, an’ refillin’ your heart with fresh, same’s you would your water-pail. But, even when you’ve done your job right, oncet ain’t goin’ to be enough. You couldn’t keep clean with one scrub-down, no matter how thora. It’s got to be done over to-morra, an’ the next day, an’ so on.