d a moment.

"No, that wouldn't be right, because I'm not giving it to Saxon."

"I'll tell you what," Saxon said. "W and S."

"Nope." Billy shook his head. "S and W, because you come first with me."

"If I come first with you, you come first with us. Billy, dear, I insist
on W and S."

"You see," Mary said to Bert. "Having her own way and leading him by the
nose already."

Saxon acknowledged the sting.

"Anyway you want, Billy," she surrendered. His arms tightened about her.

"We'll talk it over first, I guess."

CHAPTER XIV

Sarah was conservative. Worse, she had crystallized at the end of her
love-time with the coming of her first child. After that she was as
set in her ways as plaster in a mold. Her mold was the prejudices and
notions of her girlhood and the house she lived in. So habitual was
she that any change in the customary round assumed the proportions of
a revolution. Tom had gone through many of these revolutions, three of
them when he moved house. Then his stamina broke, and he never moved
house again.

So it was that Saxon had held back the announcement of her approaching
marriage until it was unavoidable. She expected a scene, and she got it.

"A prizefighter, a hoodlum, a plug-ugly," Sarah sneered, after she had
exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own future and the
future of her children in the absence of Saxon's weekly four dollars and
a half. "I don't know what your mother'd thought if she lived to see
the day when you took up with a tough like Bill Roberts. Bill! Why, your
mother was too refined to associate with a man that was called Bill. And
all I can say is you can say good-bye to silk stockings and your three
pair of shoes. It won't be long before you'll think yourself lucky to go
sloppin' around in Congress gaiters and cotton stockin's two pair for a
quarter."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Billy not being able to keep me in all kinds of
shoes," Saxon retorted with a proud toss of her head.

"You don't know what you're talkin' about." Sarah paused to laugh in
mirthless discordance. "Watch for the babies to come. They come faster
than wages raise these days."

"But we're not going to have any babies... that is, at first. Not until
after the furniture is all paid for anyway."

"Wise in your generation, eh? In my days girls were more modest than to
know anything about disgraceful subjects."

"As babies?" Saxon queried, with a touch of gentle malice.

"Yes, as b