"I've worked hard since I was ten years old, and for the last five years there's been nothin' but me between the children and the poor house. You don't know much about that kind o' worry, Mr. Wortley, an' 'taint likely you ever will. I was married when I was nineteen--" Her eyes fell on the girl and softened lovingly, "'an what that means in the country with seven children an' no help, an' the winters what they are here, maybe you can guess a little. But I tell you this: I ain't had the sorrow, all told, that's preparin' for that girl, if you keep on like this. An' I wouldn't change my lot for hers, nor would she, if she knew." There was a dead silence in the room. Only the short, grunting breaths of the sleeping dog stirred the air. The girl sat as if turned to stone, her arm hard about Caroline; the boy stared doubtfully at the woman, studying her plain, wrinkled face. "I--I have plenty of money," he said, in a hollow thin little voice, "she will always--" "Money!" Luella's voice shook with scorn, "what's money? The Lord knows, Mr. Wortley, I need money more'n you ever will, but let me tell you there's things money can't buy. Can you buy children--nice children like this one--to play with your children? Tell me that!" "I shall never have any children," the girl's voice came in a husky, strained whisper, "I shall be too--too miserable," she concluded softly, and utterly to herself; she had absolutely forgotten the others, even the boy, whose eyes turned incessantly from her face to the older woman's. Luella's shrewd glance enveloped the strong young figure. "I never heard 't misery prevented 'em," she said dryly. The boy seemed unable to move, so intense was the concentration of his thoughts; his fingers stuck out stiffly in a purposeless, set gesture. "If it is true, all that we thought," he said slowly, "then no hardship, no merely personal suffering should prevent ... the experiment must be made ... must inevitably, _sometime_...." "But not with her, not _her_, Mr. Wortley!" Luella cried. Her expression turned quickly whimsical. "You remind me o' me an' my mother one time, when I was a girl," she cried. "I wanted to prove that you c'd raise biscuits without the bakin' powder--I was terrible headstrong; I know what 'tis well 'nough, an' how hard 'tis to give 'way--an' she was tryin' to persuade me. "'I think 't least you might let me make th' experiment,' I says, an' she turned to me--I c'n see her now an', "'Luella,' says she, 'it's all very well for you to make th' experiment, but I'm the one that'll have to pay the bill!' she says. "It'll be like that with you, Mr. Wortley--you'll make th' experiment, but _she'll_ pay!" There was another silence. "We always pay," Luella added thoughtfully, "it don't seem just fair, but we do." The young man shook himself suddenly, like a dog fresh from the water.