But the mother answered violently, “Child, I will not have you go to mend some man’s house like that! We are poor, I know, but you can be fed. Widowers are often the hardest and lustiest husbands, child. So go to sleep and think no more of this. Hearty I am yet and likely to live a long full time yet, and your brother was never cruel to you, even as a child.” “He was not wed then, mother,” said the girl, sighing. But she stayed silent then and seemed to sleep. But the mother could not sleep a while, although on usual nights she slept deep and sound. She lay there thinking hard, and taking up the days past, one by one, to see if what the girl had said was true, and though she could not think of any single thing, it seemed to her the son’s wife was not warm. No, she was not very warm to the younger lad either, and at least not warm to this blind sister in her husband’s house, and here was new bitterness for the mother to bear. XV Every day the mother watched to see if what the girl had said was true, and it was true. The young wife was not rude, and her words came from her smoothly and with seeming careful courtesy always. But she put upon the maid a hundred little pricks. She gave the blind maid less than her full bowl of food, or so it seemed in the mother’s eyes, and if there were some dainty on the table she did not give her any, and the blind maid, not seeing, did not know it was there. And indeed they would all have let it pass, not heeding in their own hunger, had not the mother’s eyes been sharpened, and she cried out, “Daughter, do you not like this dish of pig’s lungs we have cooked in soup today?” And when the maid answered gently in surprise, “I did not know we had it, mother, and I like it very well,” then the mother would reach over and with her own spoon dip the meat and soup into the maid’s bowl, and be sure the son’s wife saw the mother do it, and she answered smoothly and courteously, scarcely moving her pale lips that with all their paleness were too thick, too, and she said, “I beg your pardon, sister--I did not see you had none.” But the mother knew she lied. And sometimes when the son’s wife sewed shoes for the maid, and it was her duty to make shoes for them all, she put no time on the maid’s shoes beyond what she must, and she made the soles thin and spared herself the labor of a flower upon the front, and when the mother saw it she cried, “What--shall my maid not have a little flower such as you have on all your shoes?” Then the son’s wife opened her little, dark, unshining eyes and said, “I will make them if you say, mother, only I thought since she was blind and could not see a color anyhow--and I have so many to make shoes for, and the younger lad wearing out a pair each month or two with all his running into town to play--”