"I said she's such a good mother," Minna answers him.
Homer's smirk kind of froze on his face.
"Mother to what?" he says in a low, passionate tone, like an actor.
"Mother to her three little ones," says Minna. Then she says again quick: "Why, what's the matter, Mr. Gale?" For Homer seemed to have been took bad.
"Great Godfrey!" he says, hardly able to get his voice.
"And, of course, you won't mind my saying it," Minna goes on, "because you seem so broad-minded about children, but when I taught primary in Red Gap last year those three little boys of hers gave me more trouble than any other two dozen of the pests in the whole room."
Homer couldn't say anything this time. He looked like a doctor was knifing him without anesthetics.
"And to make it worse," says Minna, "the mother is so crazy about them, and so sensitive about any little thing done to them in the way of discipline—really, she has very little control of her language where those children are concerned. Still, of course, that's how any good mother will act, to be sure; and especially when they have no father.
"I'm glad indeed the poor woman is to have someone like you that will take the responsibility off her shoulders, because those boys are now at an age where discipline counts. Of course she'll expect you to be gentle with them, even though firm. Oswald—he's eleven now, I believe—will soon be old enough to send to reform school; but the younger ones, seven and nine—My! such spirits as they have! They'll really need someone with strength."
Homer was looking as if this bright chatter would add twenty years to his age. He'd slumped down on the stoop, where he'd been setting, like he'd had a stroke.