He was pleased to have his wife point out what had already occurred to him, the strangle-hold which their relative economic situations gave them over Mrs. Knapp. “I don’t believe she’d ever be hard to handle or want more than you wanted to give her--with all those reasons at home for holding onto a job,” said Nell. She had as good a business head as Jerome, however, felt as well as he how visionary it was to build even the slightest hopes on so slight a foundation, and now contributed her own share of cold water to the prudent lowering of their expectations. “But a woman with no experience of business! Women who have spent fifteen or twenty years housekeeping are no good for anything else.” “I forgot to tell you,” said Jerome, “that she had worked some before she was married. Her father keeps the store in Brandville. I looked him up. Very good rating. She may get some of her ability from him. Those country-store men sometimes acquire a real business hunch. But see here, how can her family manage if she’s away all day? I didn’t feel like asking her. But I wondered if she could be depended on. There’s nothing more of a bother in a store than somebody who is always having to miss a day.” “Mrs. Prouty was telling me how she’s got everything organized there. They are all saying it’s just like her. Mr. Knapp is fairly comfortable now and can read, and sit up in bed, and doesn’t need constant care. There’s nothing anybody can _do_ for him, now, poor thing! The two older children are big enough to take care of themselves and dress their little brother and help around the house. It seems that several of the people at the store are being very helpful--not salespeople or anybody in Mr. Knapp’s office but a couple of the delivery boys and one of the cleaning women. The cleaning woman, old Mrs. Hennessy, works at the store you see, before and after hours, so she can go to the Knapp house in the daytime an hour or so to do up the work. And the delivery boys take turns dropping in nights and mornings to look out for the furnace and empty ashes and do the heavy things. They stop in daytimes too as they go by to see if he wants anything. Oh, they manage, somehow.” “How good poor people are to anybody in trouble,” remarked Jerome comfortably, pulling on his pipe and wondering for the first time if perhaps there really might be some truth in that threadbare remark which he had heard and repeated so many times and never believed a word of. “They say Mr. Knapp was always very kind to them at the store,” said his wife, “the work people, I mean--was lovely to old Mrs. Hennessy when her grandson had to be sent to the sanatorium. And he helped one of the delivery boys out of a scrape.”