"Woman dear," said Reuben, "you've gone and lost the paper."
She blinked in sorrow at the hominy and sausage she set before him. "That I have, and I don't understand how a body can be so heedless. I did, I had it in my basket, and then I vow I must've wrapped something in it, maybe a skein, and put it away somewhere, I don't know where—why, my mind's light, light as a whore's promise, I just don't think good."
Ben reached out to pat her fat floury hand, as Reuben said: "Then we'll draw you a fresh one. A nothing for such scholars as me and my little brother—only, bruit it not abroad that ever I said such a thing. You know, Kate, the sin of vanity in us—sad, sad."
She chuckled, dashing a comfortable tear from a bulging cheek, and bounced away to deal with a fresh emergency. Fragments of yesterday's chicken sat on a side table waiting a destiny in soup, and the lean yellow tomcat, Mr. Eccles, had wandered in nursing a sordid plot, one easily detected and swiftly refuted by a whisk of Kate's apron. He came over to rub Ben's leg rather grimly, knowing well enough that breakfast sausage is not cat-food. "Which motto was it, Kate?—believe I've lost track."
"Oh—le' me think, Master Benjamin—'Let peace in this house be everlasting as the sea'—it was real pretty." She wiped an eye and sighed. "Boys, I was thinking—maybe it's foolish, maybe it a'n't even right I should try such a thing, but I was thinking, what if I was to make that motto something in the Latin? He'd favor it so—wouldn't he?"
"The very thing!" Reuben exclaimed. "Hark 'ee: Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori. That's Virgil, Kate."
"Think of that! That's real Latin, Master Reuben? But—but a'n't it terrible short?"
"Oh, Kate!—greatest things said with fewest words."
"It do sound pretty. What's it mean?"
"Love conquereth all things, let us yield to love."