"Yes, I know," said Miss Clegg, "but I pick up a good deal from others, and there's a feeling as married women have when they talk to a woman as they suppose can't possibly know anything just 'cause she never got into any of their troubles, as makes them show forth the truth very plainly. I won't say as married women strike me more and more as fools, for it wouldn't be kindly, but I will say as the way they revel in being married and saying how hard it is, kind of strikes me as amusing. _I_ wouldn't go into a store and buy a dress and then, when every one knew as I picked it out myself, keep running around telling how it didn't fit and was tearing out in all the seams--but that's about what most of this marriage talk comes to. I do wonder what 'Liza Em'ly has said about marriage in _Deacon Tooker Talks_. That's a very funny name for a book, I think myself, but that's what she's named it. And as it seems to be about most everything, I suppose it must be about marriage, too. Of course 'Liza Em'ly's so wild to marry Elijah that everybody knows that that was what took her up to town. She didn't want to earn her living any more than any girl does. Nobody ever really aches to earn their living. But some has to, and some wants to be around with men, and there ain't no better way to be around with men nowadays than to go to work with 'em. You have 'em all day long then, and pretty soon you have 'em all the time. 'Liza Em'ly wants to have Elijah all the time." "What--" began Mrs. Lathrop.