your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You’ve got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they’ve come through it and that you will too. You’ll bear it because there isn’t any choice-except to go to pieces. You’ve got two children to take care of. And regardless of that you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him. You understand me.”
“Of course.”
“I know it’s just unmitigated tommyrot to try to say a word about it. To say nothing of brass. All I want is to warn you that a lot worse is yet to come than you can imagine yet, so for God’s sake brace yourself for it and try to hold yourself together.” He said, with sudden eagerness, “It’s a kind of test, Mary. and it’s the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That’s all.” Watching her eyes, he felt fear for her and said, “I imagine you’re thinking about your religion.”
“I am.” she said, with a certain cool pride.
“Well, more power to you,” he said. “I know you’ve got a kind of help I could never have. Only one thing: take the greatest kind of care you don’t just-crawl into it like a hole and hide in it.”
“I’ll take care,” she said.
She means there is nothing I can tell her about that, he thought; and she is right.
“Talk to Hannah about it,” he said.
“I will, Papa.”
“One other thing.”
“Yes?”
“There are going to be financial difficulties. We’ll see just what, and just how to settle them, course of time. I just want
