ving 'em
all wonder.... I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I can't...."

"You'd rather they'd know he fooled you, when he had another wife?"
Dwight sneered.

"Yes! Because he wanted me. How do I know--maybe he wanted me only just
because he was lonesome, the way I was. I don't care why! And I won't
have folks think he went and left me."

"That," said Dwight, "is a wicked vanity."

"That's the truth. Well, why can't they know the truth?"

"And bring disgrace on us all."

"It's me--it's me----" Lulu's individualism strove against that terrible
tribal sense, was shattered by it.

"It's all of us!" Dwight boomed. "It's Di."

"_Di?_" He had Lulu's eyes now.

"Why, it's chiefly on Di's account that I'm talking," said Dwight.

"How would it hurt Di?"

"To have a thing like that in the family? Well, can't you see how it'd
hurt her?"

"Would it, Ina? Would it hurt Di?"

"Why, it would shame her--embarrass her--make people wonder what kind of
stock she came from--oh," Ina sobbed, "my pure little girl!"

"Hurt her prospects, of course," said Dwight. "Anybody could see that."

"I s'pose it would," said Lulu.

She clasped her arms tightly, awkwardly, and stepped about the floor,
her broken shoes showing beneath her cotton skirt.

"When a family once gets talked about for any reason----" said Ina and
shuddered.

"I'm talked about now!"

"But nothing that you could help. If he got tired of you, you couldn't
help that." This misstep was Dwight's.

"No," Lulu said, "I couldn't help that. And I couldn't help his other
wife, either."

"Bigamy," said Dwight, "that's a crime."

"I've done no crime," said Lulu.

"Bigamy," said Dwight, "disgraces everybody it touches."

"Even Di," Lulu said.

"Lulu," said Dwight, "on Di's account will you promise us to let this
thing rest with us three?"

"I s'pose so," said Lulu quietly.

"You will?"

"I s'pose so."

Ina sobbed: "Thank you, thank you, Lulu. This makes up for everything."

Lulu was thinking: "Di has a hard enough time as it is." Aloud she said:
"I told Mr. Cornish, but he won't tell."

"I'll see to that," Dwight graciously offered.

"Goodness," Ina said, "so he knows. Well, that settles----" She said no
more.

"You'll be happy to think you've done this for us, Lulu," said Dwight.

"I s'pose so," said Lulu.

Ina, pink from her little gust of sobbing, went to her, kissed her, her
trim tan tailor suit against Lulu's blue cotton.

"My sweet, self