fore you were hangin' on my laughs
from morning till night."

"I do yet, Hanna--only you don't laugh no more. There's nothin' so fine in
a woman as sunshine."

"Provided you don't have to furnish any of it."

"Because a man 'ain't got it in him to be light in his ways don't mean he
don't enjoy it in others. Why, there just ain't nothin' to equal a happy
woman in the house! Them first months, Hanna, showed me what I'd been
missin'. It was just the way I figured it--somebody around like you,
singin' and putterin'. It was that laugh in the office made me bring it
here, where I could have it always by me."

"It's been knocked out of me, every bit of laugh I ever had in me; lemme
tell you that."

"I can remember the first time I ever heard you, Hanna. You was standin"
at the office window lookin' out in the yards at Jerry Sims unloadin' a
shipment of oats; and little Old Cocker was standin' on top of one of the
sacks barkin' his head off. I--"

"Yeh; I met Clara Sims on the street yesterday, back here for a visit, and
she says to me, she says: 'Hanna Burkhardt, you mean to tell me you never
done nothing with your voice! You oughta be ashamed. If I was your husband,
I'd spend my last cent trainin' that contralto of yours. You oughtn't to
let yourself go like this. Women don't do it no more.' That, from the
tackiest girl that ever walked this town. I wished High Street had opened
up and swallowed me."

"Now, Hanna, you mustn't--"

"In all these years never so much as a dance or a car-ride as far as
Middletown. Church! Church! Church! Till I could scream at the sight of
it. Not a year of my married life that 'ain't been a lodestone on my neck!
Eight of' 'em! Eight!"

"I'm not sayin' I'm not to blame, Hanna. A woman like you naturally likes
life. I never wanted to hold you back. If I'm tired nights and dead on my
feet from twelve hours on 'em, I never wanted you to change your ways."

"Yes; with a husband at home in bed, I'd be a fine one chasin' around
this town alone, wouldn't I? That's the thanks a woman gets for bein'
self-respectin'."

"I always kept hopin', Hanna, I could get you to take more to the home."

"The home--you mean the tomb!"

"Why, with the right attention, we got as fine an old place here as there
is in this part of town, Hanna. If only you felt like giving it a few more
touches that kinda would make a woman-place out of it! It 'ain't changed a
whit from the way me and my old father run it tog