He cut a slice of meat and used the fork to try to put it into her mouth. Her self-control went, and she broke into deep, painful sobbing. "Why did you bring us to this terrible place?" she choked out. "What right did you have to take us away from our home? You--a father--to bring six children out here into this mud--four helpless little ones--this--this horrible _wilderness_!" The words were torn from her, her whole body shook with the violence of her feelings. "You were willing to take a chance, weren't you? But how about us! What if we starve to death out here! How will you feel when there is _nothing_ to eat--nothing for the babies, nothing for any of us? Joe, Joe, what have you done to us!" Now the sobs racked her so that she could speak no more. Joe had placed the cup and plate on the ground, and now he stood silent, alone, his head hanging low. He made no move to touch her. Under her lashing all his courage had fled. He did not know his own mind. Likely he was all wrong to have come out here. He was lost, and his family was lost with him. She dashed the tears furiously out of her eyes, and then suddenly she saw him. As though she had been blind before, seeing only the children, their hunger, now she opened her eyes and saw Joe. She saw what her attack was doing to him. Helplessly, she looked at his stooped shoulders, at his hands hanging lifeless. A knife of pain turned in her chest. Everything that Joe had done, he had done for all of them. The trip was to bring all of them to a new and better place. If Joe had more hankering than other men had for an independent life, didn't that make him a better father too, a man for the children to look up to? Why, she was attacking the very courage that made Joe Tower the fine man that he was, the fine father, the brave and loving husband. Her fears did not disappear, but something bigger and more important than fear flowed into her. Her sobs stopped. She went to Joe and put her arms around his neck. "I've been going on like a loon, Joe," she said. He raised his face, and looked at her, bewildered. "Seems as though sometimes I get an overdose of feeling, and an underdose of sense." She laughed shakily. "We're going to a better life, Joe, and no matter what I say, I know that from the bottom of my heart. No matter what we have to go through on the way--we'll look back at this, my darling, and have a good laugh over it, some day!" An enormous relief came to his face. His shoulders straightened, and he took her in his arms. "You do trust me, Emma?" he asked, huskily. For answer, she kissed him on the lips. The kiss told him everything he needed to know. He took up the plate of food, divided the food exactly in half and, dutifully, he and Emma finished every morsel. They each drank exactly half of the coffee, smiling tremulously at each other over the rim of the cup. They returned to the children then.