"I work," Sears began defiantly.

"Oh, yes, Will, you work in a sort of a way; though I can remember the
time when Green Valley folks thought you were going to be a big
contractor. You promised well but somehow you never worked hard
enough. You work at things now to keep your own miserable self alive,
I guess, because when you get through using your week's wages there's
hardly enough left to keep bare life and decency in your family."

"I'm not a drunkard," Sears muttered, "and you know it."

"No, you're not a drunkard, Will Sears, more's the pity. When it comes
to choosing between a man who gets openly drunk and staggers down Main
Street in drunken penitence to his wife and children and the man who
drinks just enough to be a surly, selfish brute and yet look half-way
respectable on the outside, why, give me the drunk every time.

"You don't get drunk, only just full enough to have your family afraid
and ashamed of you. You have made life a hateful, shameful, miserable
existence for your wife and children. You've robbed them of every
right and what pitiful little possessions, hopes and plans they'd been
able to find for themselves. That's why John's in Alaska, Jimmy in the
army and Alice an eighteen-year-old wife. A precious father you've
been to make your children choose the bitter snows, the jungle and a
doubtful future with a stranger to life with you, their father."

"I've fed my children and clothed them," again muttered Sears.

"Yes, Will, you have. But--man, man--it takes more than just blood,
three begrudged meals a day and a skimpy calico dress to prove real
fatherhood. But I'm not blaming you any more than I'm blaming this
wife of yours.

"For thirty years, Milly Sears, you've been so busy trying to be a
doormat saint that you had no time to be a strong, useful mother. When
you married Will he was no worse than the average fellow. He had
faults aplenty but he had goodnesses too, and hopes and dreams. And
you, you Milly, let all the hopes and dreams die and the faults grow
and multiply. Just by letting Will backslide, forget and grow careless.

"Somebody told you that patience was a pretty ornament. It is if it's
the genuine article and properly used. But letting a man spend his
wages hoggishly on himself and robbing his children and driving them
from their lawful home and cheating you out of every right and even
your self-respect is nothing to be patient about. As for tears, they
hav