de. "They've only lived over here in the old
Adams house for three months, but the neighbours say he's almost killed
her twice since they moved in. She came of mighty set up, high falutin'
folks, you know, an' when they wouldn't hear of the marriage, she ran
off with him one night about ten years ago just after he came home out
of the army. He looked fine, they say, in uniform, on his big black
horse, but after the war ended he took to drink and then from drink, as
is natchel, he took to beatin' her. It's strange--ain't it?--how easily
a man's hand turns against a woman once he's gone out of his head?"

"Ah, I could see that she was the sort that's obliged to be beaten
sooner or later if thar was anybody handy around to do it," remarked my
mother. "Some women are made so that they're never happy except when
they're hurt, an' she's one of 'em. Why, they can't so much as look at a
man without invitin' him to ill-treat 'em."

"Thar ain't many women that know how to deal with a husband as well as
you an' Mrs. Cudlip," remarked Mrs. Kidd, with delicate flattery.

"Po' Mrs. Cudlip. I hope she is bearin' up," sighed my mother. "'Twas
the leg he lost at Seven Pines--wasn't it?--that supported her?"

"That an' the cheers he bottomed. The last work he did, po' man, was for
Mrs. Mickleborough of whom we were speakin'. I used to hear of her befo'
the war when she was pretty Miss Sarah Bland, in a white poke bonnet
with pink roses."

"An' now never a day, passes, they say, that Harry Mickleborough doesn't
threaten to turn her an' the child out into the street."

"Are her folks still livin'? Why doesn't she go back to them?"

"Her father died six months after the marriage, an' the rest of 'em live
up-town somewhar. The only thing that's stuck to her is her coloured
mammy, Aunt Euphronasia, an' they tell me that that old woman has mo'
influence over Harry Mickleborough than anybody livin'. When he gets
drunk an' goes into one of his tantrums she walks right up to him an'
humours him like a child."

As we drove on their voices grew gradually muffled and thin in my ears,
and after a minute, in which I clung desperately to my eluding
consciousness, my head dropped with a soft thud upon Mrs. Kidd's
inviting bosom. The next instant I was jerked violently erect by my
mother and ordered sternly to "keep my place an' not to make myself a
nuisance by spreadin' about." With this admonition in my ears, I pinched
my leg and sat staring wi