beads and singin' about
little raindrops.

"Gettin' an idea into a man's head is like furnishin' a room. If you can
once get a piece of furniture where you want it, it can stay there until
it's worn out or busted, except for occasional dustin' and repairin'.
You can add from time to time as you have to, but if you attempt to
refurnish a room that's all furnished, and do it all at once, you're
bound to make more disturbance than housecleanin'.

"It has to be done slow and careful, unless you have a likin' for rows,
and if you're one of those kind of women that's forever changin' their
minds about furniture and their husband's ideas, you're bound to have a
terrible restless marriage.

"Roger's pa was fresh when I took him, but, unbeknownst to me, he'd done
his own furnishin', and the pieces was dreadful set and hard to move.
Some of 'em I slid out gently and others took some manouverin', but
steady work tells on anythin'. He was thinkin' as I wanted him to about
most things, though, when he died, and that's sayin' a good deal, for he
didn't die until after we'd been married seven years and three months
and eighteen days. If he wasn't really thinkin' right, he was pretendin'
to, and that's enough to satisfy any reasonable woman.

[Sidenote: The Will]

"Margaret Merriman's pa died when she was at the tender age of ten, and
he left all his money to a distant relation in trust for Margaret, the
relative bein' supposed to spend the income on her. If Margaret died
before she was of age, the relative was to keep it, and if she should
marry before she was of age, the relative was to keep it, too. But,
livin' to eighteen' and marryin' afterwards, it was all to be
Margaret's, and the relative wasn't to have as much as a two-cent stamp
with the mucilage licked off.

"This relative was a sweet-faced lady with a large mole on her right
cheek. Margaret used to call her 'Moley,' when she was mad at her, which
was right frequent. Her name was Magdalene Mather and she'd been married
three times. She was dreadful careless with her husbands and had mislaid
'em all. Not bein' able to find 'em again, she just reckoned on their
bein' dead and was thinkin' of marryin' some more.

[Sidenote: Keeping Margaret Young]

"Seems to me it's a mistake for anybody to marry more'n once. In one of
Roger's books it says somethin' about a second marriage bein' the
triumph of hope over experience. Magdalene Mather was dreadful hopeful
and kept thin