And so was something else that Mrs.
Wagoner said in a tone of reprobation, about "people who made their beds
having to lay on them"; this process of incubation being too well known
to require further discussion.

But what could Mrs. Upton do? She could not change the course of
Destiny. One--especially if she is a widow with bad eyes, and in feeble
health, living on the poorest place in the State--cannot stop the stars
in their courses. She could not blot out the past, nor undo what she had
done. She would not if she could. She could not undo what she had done
when she ran away with Jim and married him. She would not if she could.
At least, the memory of those three years was hers, and nothing could
take it from her--not debts, nor courts, nor anything. She knew he
was wild when she married him. Certainly Mrs. Wagoner had been careful
enough to tell her so, and to tell every one else so too. She would
never forget the things she had said. Mrs. Wagoner never forgot the
things the young girl said either--though it was more the way she had
looked than what she had said. And when Mrs. Wagoner descanted on the
poverty of the Uptons she used to end with the declaration: "Well, it
ain't any fault of _mine_: she can't blame _me_, for Heaven knows I
warned her: I did _my_ duty!" Which was true. Warning others was a duty
Mrs. Wagoner seldom omitted. Mrs. Upton never thought of blaming her, or
any one else. Not all her poverty ever drew one complaint from her sad
lips. She simply sat down under it, that was all. She did not expect
anything else. She had given her Jim to the South as gladly as any woman
ever gave her heart to her love. She would not undo it if she could--not
even to have him back, and God knew how much she wanted him. Was not his
death glorious--his name a heritage for his son? She could not undo the
debts which encumbered the land; nor the interest which swallowed it up;
nor the suit which took it from her--that is, all but the old house and
the two poor worn old fields which were her dower. She would have given
up those too if it had not been for her children, Jim and Kitty, and
for the little old enclosure on the hill under the big thorn-trees where
they had laid him when they brought him back in the broken pine box from
Gettysburg. No, she could not undo the past, nor alter the present, nor
change the future. So what could she do?

In her heart Mrs. Wagoner was glad of the poverty of the Uptons; not
merely glad