“Let them talk. Their talk don’t hurt me, and it shouldn’t hurt you. They don’t talk before me.”
“But they talk behind your back, Lizzie,” Mrs. Farnshaw said with a wise nod of the head.
“They talked about us when John was here, ma, and they always talk about us; it doesn’t matter much what they talk about; they wouldn’t pay off the mortgage, nor the interest, nor raise Jack right, nor give me a chance to rest on washday. Some will say I was in the wrong, some that John was, and they all said that I was stuck-up and wouldn’t visit with them when it wasn’t so at all. They are looking to see who was wrong; I have reasoned out what was wrong. It’s principles, not personalities, that get people into troubles that don’t seem to have any way out. Oh! can’t you see, ma, that I’m free, and the women that talk about me are just where they’ve always been. Free! and don’t forget that I’m out of debt. That’s more than you’ve got by staying with your husband, and you haven’t been able to keep people from talking after all. Free, and out of debt! Don’t forget it.”
“Well, you wouldn’t ’a’ been free, either, if Mr. Noland hadn’t ’a’ left you th’ money,” Mrs. Farnshaw replied.
Elizabeth dropped into a retrospective mood for a moment before she answered, and then said slowly:
“I know that. God in Heaven, how well I know it! And do you know I think about it every day—what could be done for the poor women on these hot Kansas prairies if there were some way to see that every girl that loves a man enough to marry him could have money enough to keep her if she couldn’t live under the work and children he crowds on her. I’m free, because I have money enough all my own to live on. That’s the weight of a dollar. Don’t forget that, you poor ma, who have never had a dollar except what has been doled out to you by the man you married. The weight of a dollar,” Elizabeth added meditatively, “that’s what it is!”
Mrs. Farnshaw, who had bought the groceries for her little family with the butter and eggs, and whose sugar had sometimes been short because there was a supply of Horse Shoe Plug to provide also, had no answer ready.