"Pore Mandy," she said in a choking voice. "You's fur and away from any ground whar I kin meet up with you. I've knowed fur a spell back you ain't took no interest in the church, and I'm gre'tly afeared that's at the bottom o' your troubles. If you desert the Lord He'll desert you, honey. It's shore as I'm settin' hyar." Amanda had kneeled down and pressed her mother's head against her shoulder; but as the good woman regarded her sadly, somewhat as she might have regarded a sinner about to be prayed for in her congregation, a melancholy, half-mocking smile succeeded to the concern on the worn, handsome face upon a level with her own. "Do you think if I had worked for the fair last month, and had gone regularly to the sewing society all this while that it might have helped to make a different man of Vivian?" "Maybe not, dearie; though the Lord wurks by means, an' we can't tell," answered her mother, naïvely. "Well, mother," Amanda said, "we can't think just alike about some things. You're good. You'd be good whether you were in the Second Baptist Church or in Egypt squatting before a hideous image. And I must be myself. I must do what I think right, no matter what other people think or say. And I think it right to take my child away from a father that ill-treats her, and who sets her a frightful example in every way." "Why, you wouldn't want to cast such a slur as that on yo' daughter. People'd throw it up to her always--that her father an' mother didn't live together!" "But if she was so much happier in other ways that she could afford to stand the talk, mother?" "No, Mandy, no. Thar ain't no woman that's come uv a good family and been raised proper, an' to feel like a nice woman nat'rally does feel, but what'd ruther suffer anything else'n creation than to hev the finger o' scorn pointed at her an' know she or any o' her family'd done anything to desarve it." Mrs. Powell had been wrought up to a point where her feelings demanded expression, and she continued with an earnestness and sincerity that had the effect of the finest eloquence. "Even if thar air what yo' call 'extenuatin' circumstances,' you couldn't do this thing without bringin' 'pon yo'self the very hardest trial you could be set to endure. You couldn't be in any company without thinkin' uneasily, 'Would these people be willin' I sh'd be amongst 'em if they knowed how 'twas with me?' In church you'd fancy every wurd the preacher utters p'inted straight at you. And let alone yo'self, what wouldn't you go through thinkin' people wuz slightin' Nellie because o' you?" "Mother, mother!" Amanda cried, "you mistake me. You're exaggerating the thing. I--I didn't mean _divorce_!" "No, you don't mean it now, but it'd come to that. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Powell, solemnly.