While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been partially paralyzed.
"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the crook in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?"
The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued plaintively, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter.
"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and look stylish; and now...."
As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, the boy took the opportunity to speak of getting back to work.
"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots—"
"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he? Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store. That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell money at it, too."
The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an uncle hadn't died and left him fifteen thousand dollars.
"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener, him that couldn't tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge that hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty to do, but—"