il."

This was unanswerable, and Sarah executed her favorite tactic of attack
in flank.

"A nice come-down for you, I must say, that was raised straight an'
right, a-cuttin' up didoes with a lodger."

"Who says so?" Saxon blazed with an indignation quickly mastered.

"Oh, a blind man can read between the lines. A lodger, a young married
woman with no self respect, an' a prizefighter for a husband--what else
would they fight about?"

"Just like any family quarrel, wasn't it?" Saxon smiled placidly.

Sarah was shocked into momentary speechlessness.

"And I want you to understand it," Saxon continued. "It makes a woman
proud to have men fight over her. I am proud. Do you hear? I am proud.
I want you to tell them so. I want you to tell all your neighbors. Tell
everybody. I am no cow. Men like me. Men fight for me. Men go to jail
for me. What is a woman in the world for, if it isn't to have men like
her? Now, go, Sarah; go at once, and tell everybody what you've read
between the lines. Tell them Billy is a jailbird and that I am a bad
woman whom all men desire. Shout it out, and good luck to you. And get
out of my house. And never put your feet in it again. You are too decent
a woman to come here. You might lose your reputation. And think of your
children. Now get out. Go."

Not until Sarah had taken an amazed and horrified departure did Saxon
fling herself on the bed in a convulsion of tears. She had been ashamed,
before, merely of Billy's inhospitality, and surliness, and unfairness.
But she could see, now, the light in which others looked on the affair.
It had not entered Saxon's head. She was confident that it had not
entered Billy's. She knew his attitude from the first. Always he had
opposed taking a lodger because of his proud faith that his wife should
not work. Only hard times had compelled his consent, and, now that she
looked back, almost had she inveigled him into consenting.

But all this did not alter the viewpoint the neighborhood must hold,
that every one who had ever known her must hold. And for this, too,
Billy was responsible. It was more terrible than all the other things
he had been guilty of put together. She could never look any one in the
face again. Maggie Donahue and Mrs. Olsen had been very kind, but of
what must they have been thinking all the time they talked with her? And
what must they have said to each other? What was everybody saying?--over
front gates and back fences,--the men stan