“Shut up,” roared the showman; “talk about prohibiting the sale of rum in this State,” he snarled, glancing up at Peak; “they ought to make it a jail crime to sell a dime novel to a woman unless she’s got cross eyes and a club foot and a hare-lip--and then it wouldn’t allus be safe to let her have one of ’em. There’s more cussedness sucked up out of one of them such novels than you can get through straws at a bar. Now, Mrs. Ostrich, I ain’t got any time to stand here and tell you how many kinds of a byjoosly fool you are, for there’s a team li’ble to come along any minute. But I’m goin’ to tell you sometime, and I’ve seen enough of the world and of cheap renegades of men to make your hair curl when you think what you’ve got out of. It’s me that’s goin’ to take you home in this cart--and it’s me that thought up this way of gettin’ you there without ev’rybody knowin’ that you run away and left your husband.” The wife dragged herself on her knees to the opening and clasped her hands. “Mr. Look,” she wailed, “it’s all true what you say. But I ain’t ever had any mother that I can remember. I didn’t have anyone to tell me the things that a girl ought to know. I don’t blame you for talking hard to me. I deserve it. But I want to do right. Indeed, I do, Mr. Look. If you’ll take me home I’ll always stay there. I’m hungry to stay there. Oh, how I’ve wished I hadn’t gone--wished so all this long day and I’ve cried my eyes out wishing so. I know I don’t love anyone but my husband. Take me back to him, Mr. Look, and I’ll never want to be anything but a true wife to him again--never, never, never!” Her fluttering hands grasped the sides of the van and she leaned her convulsed face toward him. “So your mother died when you was young?” Hiram inquired. His tone had softened. “I never knew who my mother was.” “Mine died and left me under fourteen and Phin a baby,” said the showman, looking off across the fields and blinking his eyes. “It’s sort of--sort of startin’ anyone back-handed into the world without a mother to kind of walk hand in hand with up to where the paths split. Bad for a man, worse for a woman.” There was silence for a little time, except for the girl, who sobbed with quick indrawings of the breath. “Let’s see, Sime,” said Hiram, trying to keep his voice steady and matter-of-fact, “I ain’t ever asked you how it was with your fam’ly. Was you brought up by a mother?” “I was bound out from an orphan asylum when I was eight,” replied the giant, turning away his face and fingering the seam of a patch on his knee. “A farmer took me and he made me wear pants made out of a butcher’s frock, and I never got but five weeks’ schoolin’, ’cause I couldn’t stand ’em laughin’ at me.”