"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I left little Otie so sick--I hadn't ought to of left him--only I did want the fifty cents....' "'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.' "'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money--' "'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't you?' "'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's just exactly how Silas is. "'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you was tellin' me--about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now while the river's low, and you know it.' "'Woman--' Silas begins excitable. "'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says, some direct. "'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n--Who-a!' Silas yells, pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a citizen ought to be, and ain't. "Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap. "'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine. "'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it. The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!' "Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well as by my prayers,' says she. "'_Your_ children!' says I. "I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress and told us that was for _our_ baby--and then we always looked away, squeamish. "'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that way, that maybe you might possibly have--have one, sometime.' "'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to know--everything,' Letty said. "That struck awful near home.