Closing the door behind her, Mrs. Oakley crossed the room and sat down near her daughter in the best mahogany rocker. Then, observing that she had disarranged the fall of the purple calico flounce, she rose and adjusted the slip cover. While she was still on her feet, she went over to the bed and shook the large feather pillows into shape. After that, before sitting down again, she stood for a few moments with her stern gaze wandering about the room, as if she were seeking more dirt to conquer. But such things did not worry her. They drifted like straws on the surface of her mind, while her immortal spirit was preoccupied with a profound and incurable melancholy.
"I hope you ain't upset in your mind, daughter," she said abruptly.
Dorinda turned her lucid gaze on her mother. "Ma, whatever made you marry Pa?" she asked bluntly.
For an instant the frankness of the question stunned Mrs. Oakley. She had inherited the impenetrable Scotch reserve on the subject of sentiment, and it seemed to her, while she pondered the question, that there were no words in which she could answer her daughter. Both her vocabulary and her imagination were as innocent of terms of sex as if she were still an infant learning her alphabet.
"Well, your father's a mighty good man, Dorinda," she replied evasively.
"I know he is, but what made you marry him?"
"He's never given me a cross word in his life," Mrs. Oakley pursued, working herself up, as she went on, until she sounded as if she were reciting a Gospel hymn. "I've never heard a complaint from him. There never was a better worker, and it isn't his fault if things have always gone against him."
"I know all that," said Dorinda, as implacable as truth, "but what made you marry him? Were you ever in love with him?"
Mrs. Oakley's eyes lost suddenly their look of mystic vision and became opaque with memories. "I reckon I sort of took a fancy to him," she responded.
"Is there ever any reason why people marry?"