“And there is something you have to be thankful for,” said Martha further, forgetting that nothing causes man to hate his lot like telling him to be thankful for it; “you’ve got a good man to fall back on. That Quarry’s more to you in most ways nor your born mother would be. Yesterday he was saying as how risky it was to marry where the language was different. Two tongues like that in a house means secrets.” Emma had started up. “That Quarry says more than his prayers,” she cried out fiercely; “I knew he’d been lyin’ ’round about me. I don’t hold by his ways; and I’m goin’ to stick by that husk of a husband in there, ef he don’t get better till the day I die. He ain’t talked kind about me, and worse talk is due, I know, but I’ll bide my rights, and have ’em.” Martha felt admiration. Emma was not as Quarry had reported her. She recited a few more “incidents,” and strolled, without leave-making and still knitting, toward the door. “Come in some night when you’re lonesome,” was all she had left in her heart of the invitation she had meant to give the girl in Bowa’s interest. It was plain to her woman’s eye that Emma loved Jarlsen maimed better than a town full of men of sound members. She wondered, however, why the girl hadn’t the sense to take Quarry, who was getting in with the factory hands like water through a leak. Black came in a moment after Martha’s departure. He had a wallet in his hand, and his face was clothed in a bright kindliness that turned Emma’s heart toward him. “I’m glad you’ve had lady’s company,” he said. “You’re looking daft, dear,” Emma answered, when she had studied him. Suddenly the little fellow spread his hands. “Last night,” he said, “I went to heaven cheap--fifty cents entrance fee. I heard a man play on a fiddle; well, if the sweetest voice in heaven sang its best it couldn’t learn that feller much. I sat there and just pined away to hear the back door shut, or some other shabby kind of sound, just to show it was really I situated in the concert hall. But that’s not this,” he concluded, putting his hand on the wallet; “here’s your due.” Jerry held it out to her. His face was red, and he made visible efforts to control its expression, which changed from conscious diplomacy to kindly eagerness. “I seen a doctor in the town, a professor of blasts, kind of. He knows the ins and outs and conbinizations of paralysis pretty pat, and I told him I had a good friend laid up in a blast, and he said he’d charge maybe a hundred or maybe fifty dollars to come up on purpose to see him. So that’s your best way of layin’ out his money, Emma.” “I was thinkin’ that would be good myself,” Emma answered with a quiver of gratitude on her lips.