a kind of sculptor,
too--makes patterns for all these little acorns and leaves and
do-funnies on stoves. They've got forty-'leven children and need help
and I'm perfectly willing Mart should help 'em. We're looking up houses
now. He's going to buy a place for 'em on the west side. Wednesday night
I went to see the Doctor Brents, Dorothy's friends. They had a
dinner--very nice, but they all kind o' sat 'round and waited for us to
perform. I guess they thought we were mountain lions. But they didn't
make much out o' me. They was one chap there with goggles who looked at
Mart like an undertaker. He's a scientific doctor--one of these fellers
that invent new ways of doing things. His name is Halliday. I liked Dr.
Brent pretty well--but Mrs. Brent only so-so. The doctor wants to
'dagnose' Mart's case--says it won't cost a cent. We all went to a show
at night and the Captain was just about petered to a point. He's better
though. The lower altitude helps his circulation. I guess his heart _is_
affected. He's afraid now he won't ever be able to go back to the mines.
He wants to slide on to New York and see his father and wants me to
go--but I'd rather come home--I'm homesick for the hills. They're nice
to me here--but I want to see the old Peak once more. Tell" (here she
wrote "Ben" and blotted it) "tell Mr. Fordyce that we're all right and
to keep us posted every day. We see by the papers that the mine-owners
are going to throw the unions out of business. If they try that they'll
be war again. We'll be home soon--or at least I will. I'm getting
home-sicker every minute as I write."

She added a postscript. "Don't show my letters to _any one_. I wish I'd
'a' had a little more schooling."

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARTHER EAST

Haney visibly brightened as the days went by, and took long rides in his
auto, sometimes with Bertha, sometimes alone with Lucius, and now and
then with some old acquaintance, who, having seen his name in the paper,
ventured to call. They were not very savory characters, to tell the
truth, and he did not always introduce them to Bertha, but as his health
improved he called upon a few of the more reputable of them,
billiard-table agents, and the like of that, and to these proudly
exhibited his wife.

Bertha had hitherto accepted this with boyish tolerance, but now it
irritated her. Some of these visitors presumed on her husband's past and
treated her with a certain freedom of tone and looseness of to