“No, ma’am. My wife’s a mighty fine woman. If I’d had the luck to belong to her family—but seems like I was made different; the Yankee side to me crops up, I expect, when I ain’t countin’ on it. She did bring the children and try livin’ up here in a flat the first year I went into the business, but it made her so pinin’ she had to go back; she wasn’t used to the neighborhood. Women depend a good deal on the neighborhood. _You_ know my wife, Miss Dosia. Her parents are gettin’ sort of old and agin’, and she allowed that they needed her; and they kept on needin’ her, I reckon. Her brother Bob was jailed again on Christmas day for drawin’ a gun on one of the Groudys. It kind of broke her all up; he’d promised her to quit. Her sister’s husband, Jim Pierce, he’d lit out before. Now, there’s the other brother, Satterson—he’s a mighty fine fellow, six foot two in his stockin’s, but he doesn’t _do_ anything. Just drinks. My wife she thinks the world and all of Satterson. I don’t blame any woman for being devoted to her family—shows heart.” “Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Dosia, staring at Mr. Cater, who wore an inscrutable expression. She was wondering if this crew of unsavory relations-in-law lived on Mr. Cater’s earnings; she knew his wife as a pretty, fretful woman with a discontented mouth. “After all, there isn’t much in a man, when you get down to it, to interest a woman,” continued Mr. Cater impartially. “She wants him to think of _her_; of co’se it’s his business to. I had a sort of set idea to begin on—but there’s nothin’ in life so wreckin’ as a set idea; I’ve found that out. You’ve got to keep your point of view on a swivel, and turn it so’s you can see to keep on your windin’ way without runnin’ down your fellow-bein’s—isn’t that so? I don’t blame any woman for findin’ out that a man doesn’t always make up for home and mother—I don’t know that I always yearn for my own society.” His inscrutable expression changed to a smile. “I reckon you won’t yearn for it, either, if I go on talkin’ in this way.” “Oh, yes, I will,” said Dosia, dimpling. “Did you see my father and mother when you were in Balderville? How did they look?” “Why—about the same as usual,” replied Mr. Cater delicately, with a swift mental view of them passing before his eyes that instantly materialized itself to Dosia. “I promised them I’d come and see you—and meant to before this. It was through Miss Dosia’s comin’ here that I got acquainted with your husband, Mrs. Alexander,” he continued, turning to Lois. “He’s a mighty fine man. He and I, we’re choppin’ at the same log, so to speak, only he’s takin’ side hacks at a lot more logs. I reckon he’s got a pretty good backin’?” “Oh, yes,” affirmed Lois.