"Or a housekeeper?"
"Why, yes. That's what we advertised fer. I didn't know it."
Mary Warren pondered for a long time.
"Look at me," she said at last. "There's no place for me back home, and none here. What sort of housekeeper would I make—and what sort of—of—wife? I'm disappointing you; and you're disappointing me. What shall we both do?"
"Why, how do you mean?" said Sim Gage, wonderingly. "Disappoint you? Of course I couldn't marry a woman like you! You don't want me to do that? That wouldn't be right."
"Oh, I don't mean that! I don't know what I did mean!"
Some sense of her perturbation must have come to him. "Now don't you worry, ma'am. Don't you git troubled none a-tall. I'm a-goin' to take care of you myself until everything gits all right."
"I'm a thief! I'm a beggar!" was all she could say.
"The same here, ma'am! You've got nothing on me," said Sim Gage. "What I said is, we're in the same boat, and we got to go the best way we can till things shapes out. It ain't very much I got to offer you. Us sagebrushers has to take the leavings."
"You've said the truth for me—the very truth. I'm of the discard—I can't earn my living. Leavings! And I wanted to earn my living."