"And had the devil's own time with him. She let out that much this morning." "I am growing accustomed to your language." Once more Mrs. Abbott was determined to be amiable and tactful. She realized that the child's brain was seething with the excitements of the day, but was aghast at the revelations it had recklessly tossed out, and admitted that the problem of "handling her" could no longer be disposed of with home-made generalities. "Yes, mother did not have a bed of roses. Father was mayor at one time and held various other public offices, and no one, at least, ever accused him of civic corruptness. Quite the contrary. The city owes more than one reform to his determination and ability. "He even risked his life fighting the bosses and their political gangs, for he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; what men call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a brilliant group of disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married women here have always been great gossips. Well--you may as well know it--it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary, who are the most abstemious of men--he drank and gambled and had too much to do with those unspeakable women.... "Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks), he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married. But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her share of the Ballinger estate--not very much." VII "Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?" "Mother did everything a good woman could do." "Maybe she was too good." "You abominable child. A woman can't be too good." "Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has different tastes." "Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father." "Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why didn't mother get a divorce?" "A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very dear friends had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I didn't approve even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home."