"Sure as I'm a sinner." Mrs. McDougal held up first one shoe and then the other. "Just the soles were wet, and their sizzlin' don't mean anything. They're an inch thick, them soles are. Them's McDougal's shoes." She held her feet out proudly. "I always did say, Miss Gibbie, if you couldn't have what you wanted in life, for the love of the Lord don't whine about it, but work it off and get a smile on! I'd a heap rather have a telephone in my house and just step up to it and call for one of them takin cabbys, like we saw at Atlantic City, and come a-scootin' and a-honkin' up to your door and step out superior and send up a card with Mrs. Joel B. McDougal on it than to put on two pairs of McDougal's socks first, and them pull away at his shoes and wrap my legs in newspapers to keep my skirts from slushin' of 'em. I'd a heap rather done that. But a lot of life ain't what we'd rather. It's what is. And my grandmother always told me there warn't nothin' in life what showed the stock you come from as the way you took what come to you. I never did have no use for a whimperer. Of course, I'm plain. Born Duke and married McDougal, but whenever I get in a fog and can't see clear, and so tired out I can't eat, and plum run down, I say to myself, 'Your folks ain't ever flunked yet, and you keep your head where the Lord put it.' He put it up. Folks see me laugh a lot. I do. I couldn't learn to play on the painer, though I'm clean crazy about music. I couldn't learn none of the things I yearned for inside, so I said to myself, 'You learn to laugh, laugh hearty.' And somehow it's helped a lot, laughin' has. There's many a time I done it to keep tears back. Ain't nobody but has tears to shed some time or other. But 'tain't no use in keepin' a tank of 'em to be tapped at every slip up. When I get so I can't keep mine back any longer I goes to the woodhouse and locks the door and has it out. But that's just when I'm tired and there don't seem nothin' ahead. I tell the Lord about it. Tell Him there ain't nothin' human can help. Just Him. And if He don't, I'm done for. Ain't ever been a time yet that when I come right down to it and says, 'Lord, I need You,' that the help ain't handed out. I mean help to take hold again and keep on laughing. I don't ask for automobiles and a brick house and fur coats and plum-puddin's. Never did think the Lord was in that kind of supply business. But when I says, 'You and Me got to fight this thing out,' He ain't ever gone back on me yet. Yes'm, these here is McDougal's shoes. I was thankful enough they was in the house to put on. I always was lucky, though. But just listen at me a-runnin' on worse'n Mis' Buzzie Tate. And I ain't even answered your question as to what I come for. Maybe it's because I'm not sure how you'll take it." Miss Gibbie leaned over and with the poker broke a large lump of coal, making it blaze and roar in licking, outleaping flames. "What is it? I'm not dangerous, I hope."