"Ma, I've been thinking about you a good deal this winter," she began slowly. "Something is wrong with us all." The girl thought again for a moment. Her mother watched her with sharp attention and waited. Reforms were not easy to discuss with her mother; they were very different, Elizabeth and her mother. Elizabeth hardly dared express her longing to reorganize their home. If only she could effect a reformation! Her heart had been set on it all winter. She knew now how people _could_ live if only they understood how to do it. Her help here was needed. When she began to speak again it was very slowly, and with a careful consideration of the words she was using. "We ought all of us to be different. We go along day after day hating our work, scolding and fretting at each other, and never really happy, any of us, and I've been wondering why?" Her mother eyed her closely. Something of the girl's mood stirred a responsive chord. "I've thought of it too," she said, "but I can't never tell why it is though, unless"--she spoke slowly and Elizabeth was encouraged--"unless it's because we don't never belong to ourselves. Now your pa wants t' run th' house, an' th' farm, an' you children, an' me, an' everything, an' I'm so tired, an' never have any help, that anybody'd be cross. Nobody ever pities me, though. Here, take this dasher an' finish this here churnin' for me." Elizabeth took the dasher into her own hand and stood looking down meditatively at the cream gathered about the hole in the churn lid. The first sentence of her mother's remark struck her attention. "Why can't folks belong to themselves?" she asked, letting the dasher rest while she churned mental problems of greater moment. Mrs. Farnshaw looked up quickly. "Well, if you think you can marry an' belong t' yourself, just you try it," she replied. "But, ma, if a man loved a woman couldn't she get him to leave her free? Now--" Mrs. Farnshaw cut her short. "Love! Men don't know how to spell th' word. They get a woman, an' after she's got children they know she can't help herself. She's got t' stick to it 'cause she can't raise 'em alone an'--an' it don't make no difference whether he takes care of 'em or not--" Words failed the exasperated woman. Elizabeth studied her mother with a new interest. She began to apply her mother's words to her own case. She knew that her mother had wanted her services this spring as much as her father, and remembered the letter calling her home. "But that don't cover your case, ma. You love pa more than you do us children; you know you do, and we know that you do too."