"True for you. So he has, just like s’ciety ladies. But that ain’t to say there’ll be anybody’ll come. An’ I sometimes think there’s more dogs, ’n days, anyhow." Sam looked up. "Say, mother, you ain’t down-hearted, are you?" "No. Why? What’d make me downhearted, I should like to know?" "I just thought you might be," her husband answered. "I never heard you speak that doubting kind of way before. And, we’ve no call to think ill of the world, with all the luck that’s come to us." "Certaintly. An’ if luck don’t stay with us, itself, it won’t be because we ain’t set her a chair, an’ done every mortal thing we know of to make her comfortable. I’ve no kick comin’, nor ever had. I like life all right, the hard part along with the soft part. If you didn’t have the one you wouldn’t know how to relish the other. But, speakin’ o’ Nora, I never looked to see her sportin’ a ’finity of her own, I can tell you that!" "’’Finity’?" questioned Sam. "Genteel for fella," Martha answered. "I often heard Mrs. Sherman speakin’ of’m. You can take it from me, I never looked to see that same Nora get a-holt o’ one." "Nor I. And I said as much to Ma. Ma told it back to Nora, and Nora was as mad as could be. She said if it came to that, she didn’t see as she was the worst-looking one in the family, when a body counted in what some of us had married." "Meanin’ me," observed Martha appreciatively. "She said she ’didn’t see why folks should be so monstrous surprised that she got a husband. Every Joan has her Jack.’ The very words she said." "Sure they have. But only it ain’t told what kind o’ Jack. So did Balaam have a jack, if she wants _that_ kind. But, p’raps McKenna is a prize-package. _We_ don’t know. I wonder will he take kindly to Ma?" Sam shook his head. "One of the first things he told me was, ’We couldn’t look to him to give my mother a home. He had troubles of his own.’ It stirred me up so, I almost lost my temper. I said I didn’t look to him to give my mother a home. If he gave my sister one, now he’d contracted to marry her, I’d be glad." "Why, Sam," said Martha looking at him with mock-reproach, "I wonder at you, I do so! To speak up that fierce! You hadn’t ought to be so violent, an’ use such strong language to a party just gettin’ ready to come into the fam’ly. It might scare’m off. He must think you’re a dretful bully." "Nora told Ma, before I left, that Ma was foolish to stay back in New York. She said she and McKenna, starting out, young married folks——" "God save the mark!" murmured Martha. "She said they couldn’t offer her a home, much as they’d like to. But Ma said her heart was broke with the country. She wanted to live in the city where something was going on."