"I might not have been a drudge," said Miss 'Rill, softly, flushing over her needlework. "At least my life—and his—would have been different."
"Ye don't know how lucky you be," snapped her mother. "And this is all the thanks I git for tellin' Hopewell Drugg that he'd brought his pigs to the wrong market."
"At least," said the spinster, with a sigh, "he will never worry you on that score again, mother—he nor any other man. When a woman gets near to forty, with more silver than gold in her hair, and the best of her useless life is behind her, she need expect no change in her estate, that's sure."
"Ye might be a good deal wuss off," sniffed her mother.
"Perhaps that is so," agreed Miss 'Rill, with a sudden hard little laugh. "But don't you take pattern by me, Janice, no matter what folks tell you. Mrs. Beasely is better off than I am. She has the memory of doing for somebody whom she loved and who loved her. While I——Well, I'm just an old maid, and when you say that about a woman, you say the worst!"
"Why, the idee!" exclaimed her mother, with wrath. "I call that flyin' right in the face of Providence."
"I don't believe that God ever had old maids in the original scheme of things."
"Humph! didn't He?" snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "Then why is there so many more women than men in the world? Will you please tell me that, Amarilla?" and this unanswerable argument closed what Janice realized was not the first discussion of the unpleasant topic, between the ex-schoolteacher and her sharp-tongued mother.