Jim. "It stands to reason that
you can't have any idea about the feeling of being disgraced. I don't
believe a man can ever shake it off in this world: if he can in any
other, I have my doubts. I don't know what the orthodox people ever
wanted to get up their theory of a hell for. A man can be a worse hell
to himself, than any hell they can invent to put him into. I know that."

"Jim!" exclaimed Hetty, "how dare you speak so, with this dear little
innocent baby's eyes looking up at you?"

"That's just the reason," answered Jim, bitterly. "If this baby hadn't
come, there seemed to be some chance of our outgrowing the memory of the
things we'd like to forget and have forgotten. But this just rakes it
all up again as bad as ever. You'll see: you don't know people so well
as Sally and I do."

Before many weeks had passed, Hetty was forced to admit that Jim was
partly in the right. Neighbor after neighbor, under the guise of a
friendly interest in the baby, took occasion to go over all the details
of the first baby's life and death; and there was, in their manner to
Sally, a certain new and pitying condescension which filled Hetty with
wrath.

"What a mercy 'tis, 'tis a boy," said one visitor sanctimoniously to
Hetty, as they left Sally's room together. Hetty turned upon her like
lightning.

"I'd like to know what you mean by that," she said sharply. The woman
hesitated, and at last said:

"Why you know, of course, such things are not so much consequence to
men."

"Such things as what?" said Hetty, bluntly. "I don't understand you."
When at last her visitor put her meaning into unmistakable words, Hetty
wheeled (they were walking down the long pine-shaded avenue together);
stood still; and folding her arms on her bosom said:

"There! that was what I wanted. I thought if you were driven to putting
it into plain English, perhaps you 'd see how abominable it was to think
it."

"No, no, you needn't try to smooth it down," she continued, interrupting
her guest's efforts to mollify her by a few deprecating words. "You
can't unsay it, now it's said; and saying it's no worse than thinking
it. I don't envy you your thoughts, though. I've always stood up for
Sally, and I always shall, and anybody that is stupid enough to suppose,
because I stand up for her, I justify what she did that was wrong, is
welcome: I don't care. Sally is a good, patient, loving woman to-day; I
don't know anybody more so: I, for one, respect her. I