“It was a hard time, Mr. Gant,” she whispered, “a hard time, sure enough…. It wasn’t all the cursin’and the drinkin’—I got used to that…. I reckon I was only an ignorant sort of girl when I met you and I guess,” she went on with a pathetic and unconscious humour, “I didn’t know what married life was like… but I could have stood the rest of it… the bad names an’all the things you called me when I was goin’to have another child… but it was what you said when Grover died… accusin’me of bein’responsible for his death because I took the children to St. Louis to the Fair—” and at the words as if an old and lacerated wound had been reopened raw and bleeding, she wept hoarsely, harshly, bitterly—“that was the worst time that I had—sometimes I prayed to God that I would not wake up—he was a fine boy, Mr. Gant, the best I had—like the write-up in the paper said he had the sense an’judgment of one twice his age… an’somehow it had grown a part of me, I expected him to lead the others—when he died it seemed like everything was gone… an’then to have you say that I had—” her voice faltered to a whisper, stopped: with a pathetic gesture she wiped the sleeve of her old frayed sweater across her eyes and, already ashamed of her tears, said hastily:
“Not that I’m blamin’you, Mr. Gant…. I reckon we were both at fault… we were both to blame… if I had it to do all over I know I could do better… but I was so young and ignorant when I met you, Mr. Gant… knew nothing of the world… there was always something strange-like about you that I didn’t understand.”
Then, as he said nothing, but lay still and passive, looking at the ceiling, she said quickly, drying her eyes and speaking with a brisk and instant cheerfulness, the undaunted optimism of her ever-hopeful nature:
“Well, now, Mr. Gant, that’s all over, and the best thing we can do is to forget about it…. We’ve both made our mistakes—we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t—but now we’ve got to profit by experience—the worst of all this trouble is all over—you’ve got to think of getting well now, that’s the only thing you’ve got to do, sir,” she said pursing her lips and winking briskly at him—“just set your mind on getting well—that’s all you’ve got to do now, Mr. Gant—and the battle is half won. For half our ills and troubles are all imagination,” she said sententiously, “and if you’ll just make up your mind now that you’re going to get well—why, sir, you’ll do it,” and she looked at him with a brisk nod. “And we’ve both got years before us, Mr. Gant—for all we know, the best
