Once when Mrs. Farnshaw had gone beyond the mark where her daughter could receive it in silence, urging that Elizabeth call her husband home and submit herself to the matrimonial yoke, the girl turned upon her in annoyance: "You'd have me just where you are yourself, ma. You say pa mistreats you--that's just what was coming to me. If I didn't have money enough that was all my own to live on, my husband would be sneering at me and keeping me in hot water all the time, exactly as pa sneers at you." "But you're separated!" Mrs. Farnshaw cried. "Yes," the girl said slowly, "and because we are separated I can go to town if I like, I can go to church, I can go to see a neighbour, or my mother, without hating to ask for a horse to drive or being told when to come home, and when Jack is naughty I can talk to him without having anybody set his little will against mine and make it harder to deal with him. Oh, mother mine! Can't you see that I'm happier than you are?" "But, you're livin' apart and--and folks is a talkin'!" the mother exclaimed hopelessly. "Let them talk. Their talk don't hurt me, and it shouldn't hurt you. They don't talk before me." "But they talk behind your back, Lizzie," Mrs. Farnshaw said with a wise nod of the head. "They talked about us when John was here, ma, and they always talk about us; it doesn't matter much what they talk about; they wouldn't pay off the mortgage, nor the interest, nor raise Jack right, nor give me a chance to rest on washday. Some will say I was in the wrong, some that John was, and they all said that I was stuck-up and wouldn't visit with them when it wasn't so at all. They are looking to see _who_ was wrong; I have reasoned out _what_ was wrong. It's principles, not personalities, that get people into troubles that don't seem to have any way out. Oh! can't you see, ma, that I'm free, and the women that talk about me are just where they've always been. Free! and don't forget that I'm out of debt. That's more than you've got by staying with your husband, and you haven't been able to keep people from talking after all. Free, and out of debt! Don't forget it." "Well, you wouldn't 'a' been free, either, if Mr. Noland hadn't 'a' left you th' money," Mrs. Farnshaw replied. Elizabeth dropped into a retrospective mood for a moment before she answered, and then said slowly: "I know that. God in Heaven, how well I know it! And do you know I think about it every day--what could be done for the poor women on these hot Kansas prairies if there were some way to see that every girl that loves a man enough to marry him could have money enough to keep her if she couldn't live under the work and children he crowds on her. I'm free, because I have money enough all my own to live on. That's the weight of a dollar. Don't forget that, you poor ma, who have never had a dollar except what has been doled out to you by the man you married. The weight of a dollar," Elizabeth added meditatively, "that's what it is!"