"Well, now, dear, dear mother, listen to me," her daughter pleaded. "Suppose that--finally, that was the only way to save myself--to--to protect myself from--suppose we were in another place, in a northern city, where nobody knows me?" "Thar ain't no place on the face of the 'arth so remote but what talk'd find you out." "Shall we be martyrs, then, to a few old women's tongues? Am I to take the risk of"--Amanda bent and finished her sentence in her mother's ear. "Honey, shorely ye kin leave _that_ in the good Lord's hands!" "I'd have been in a nice fix if I'd have left it in his hands all these years," said Amanda Thomas, with a look so skeptical and full of accusation against something seen only in her mind's eye, that her mother's pink color faded and left her pretty cheeks white. "That's where our creeds differ, mother. I believe in not leaving things to chance." "I said leavin' 'em to the Lord," the old lady amended. "It's the same thing," said Amanda, recklessly. "Oh, Mandy, Mandy, it gives me a cold chill fur to hear you talk so." "I won't talk so, then. Heaven knows I don't want to worry you any more than can be helped. But let's look at this thing reasonably. First, about Nellie. The child must and shall have a chance for a happy, peaceful life. She mustn't be tyrannized over, and hampered, and kept down; she ought to be well educated and have a fair chance in the world. And for that she must be away from here--and away from her father." "Why, I sh'd think her pa wuz the ve'y one to help her to an eddication. Vivian's smart enough, an' ain't he been to college?" "Yes, he's been to college, and he can sing sweetly, the girls say, and play the flute, and read Horace's odes in the original, and dance better than any other man in the county," said Amanda, despairingly. "But does all that make him a good father, or fit him to supervise Nellie's education?" "I dunno what more you kin want, dear," answered her perplexed parent. "Well! There are certain moral qualities. We needn't go into it. To come to myself. I'm a young woman yet, mother, only twenty-eight. Is my whole life to be ruined for this one mistake, made when I was a mere child, and ignorant of the world as a baby?" "You forgit. A woman's life's sp'iled if she leaves her husband. Thar ain't no sech thing as takin' a fresh start with a livin' husband in the background o' your life. He'd be croppin' up yar an' thar an' ev'ywhar, wors'n a field o' nettles. Do you reckon Vivian's goin' to lose sight o' you? And, moreover, Mandy, if you sh'd go to the dretful pass o' seekin' a divorce, wouldn't the law give him the child?" Amanda started, and bent her black brows fiercely. This was the first argument her mother had used that she was unable to answer.