"You can't stay in this town. Do you hear that? If you do, if you try to stay here and mock me, a decent woman, I'll have you arrested; I'll have you sent to the lock-up; I'll----" "Mom," interrupted Mary. "I won't hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt nobody. I didn't come here to do no harm." "How kin you come here yet without doin' harm? Ain't you done enough without comin' back here to shame your own folks?" "But, mom," Mary pleaded, "I won't shame nobody; I'll do whatever you say." Little Mrs. Denbigh collapsed upon a kitchen chair. She rocked from side to side. She fanned herself with her checkered apron; grief conquered anger; and long dried tears came at last to her old eyes and coursed, unrestrained, down her hard cheeks. "What did I ever do fer to deserve this?" she moaned. "What did I ever do to receive this judgment? A child o' mine! A child o' mine! An' her the baby that she was! Didn't her pop an' me bring her up the best we could? Ain't I always lived accordin' to the Lord's word? What have I done to deserve this?" Mary stepped to the weeping woman's side. She put her fingers to the gray hair and stroked it, timidly. "Go away!" cried the mother. "Don't you dare to touch me! Don't you dare yet to pollute me! Oh! A child o' mine to do this!" She fell into another paroxysm of grief, and Mary sank to her knees and took one of the gnarled hands between her own hands. "Listen, mom," she said; "I'll tell you all about it, an' then you'll know." She did tell her, as much as she dared; but Mrs. Denbigh only half understood. The elder woman's life had been cast in a mold; it had long since hardened into a destined shape, and no sympathy on her own part, no explanations on the part of another, could alter her. Dire necessity she had often known, but she had not known it amid surroundings where the sufferer's only course was that which alone had been possible for Mary. If she softened, it was not because she comprehended, but because Mary was her child. "Don't tell me no more," she said at last. "You could 'a' gone to work." "I tried that, an' nobody'd have me." "You could 'a' gone to some church-folk." "I did, but they couldn't get me a job." "You could 'a' gone to some institution a'ready." "How'd I have lived after I come out?" "Well, you shouldn't 'a' run away in the first place. Didn't we treat you right?" To have answered that question in the negative would not have been to be altogether true, and Mary did not even yet see enough clearly to discern that the conditions which had driven her from home were economic forces that made parents and child equally blameless. "Can't I stay here?" she appealed. "Can't I please stay here an' work for you?" Mrs. Denbigh shook her head. "I'd work hard. I'd help you. I wouldn't never complain. All I want is just to be quiet. I'd work hard. Nobody'd never know." "It'd be all over town by evenin' still."