When people see you've
got a husband and money they'll not be down on you no more.
They'll forget all about your maw--and they won't know nothin'
about the other thing. You treat me right and I'll treat you
right. I'm not one to rake up the past. There ain't arry bit of
meanness about me!"

"But you'll let me stay here in the country?" pleaded Susan. Her
imagination was torturing her with pictures of herself in
Sutherland and the people craning and whispering and mocking.

"You go where I go," replied Jeb. "A woman's place is with her
man. And I'll knock anybody down that looks cockeyed at you."

"Oh!" murmured Susan, sinking back against the support.

"Don't you fret, Susie," ordered Jeb, confident and patronizing.
"You do what I say and everything'll be all right. That's the
way to get along with me and get nice clothes--do what I say.
With them that crosses me I'm mighty ugly. But you ain't a-goin'
to cross me. . . . Now, about the house. I reckon I'd better
send Keziah off right away. You kin cook?"

"A--a little," said Susan.

Jeb looked relieved. "Then she'd be in the way. Two women about
always fights--and Keziah's got the Ferguson temper. She's
afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum."
Jeb looked at her with a smile and a frown. "Perk up a little,"
he more than half ordered. "I don't want Keziah jeerin' at me."

Susan made a pitiful effort to smile. He eyed it sourly,
grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that caused her to
leap forward in a gallop. "Whoa!" he yelled. "Whoa--damn you!"
And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down. A
turning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame
house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a
weather-beaten picket fence. The sagging shingle roof sloped
abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two
smaller upstairs. The door was in the center of the house; a
weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of
weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.

"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the
mare and informing the house of his arrival. Then to Susan: "You
git down and I'll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded
toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set
between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap. "Go right
in and make yourself at home. Tell Keziah who you air. I'll be
along, soon as I unhitch and feed the m