"That's so, too," Sadie acquiesced.
"I guess Hiram'll press it more'n ever now that we'd ought to put Mom to the poorhouse and rent our old home. The land would bring a good rent, he says, and we've no call to leave her live on it free any longer. But I tell Hiram it would make talk if we put her to the poorhouse. Hardly any one knows we got a step-mother, and we don't want to start any talk."
"Yes, well, but how could they blame us when she ain't our own mother?" Sadie protested.
"But you know how she brags about us so proud to her neighbours out there in Martz Township—just as if we was her own sons and daughters—and tells 'em how grand we live and how much Danny is thought of and how smart he is and what fine sermons Hiram preaches and how she kep' us all when we were little while Pop drank so and we hadn't anything but what she earned at the wash-tub! Yes," said Jennie indignantly, "she tells it all right out perfectly shameless and anybody to hear her talk would think we was her own flesh and blood!"
"Yes, it often worries me the way the folks out there talk down on us and say she always treated us like her own and we always treated her like a step-mother!" fretted Sadie.
"Well, I guess we needn't mind what such common, poor country folks say about us!" sneered Jennie. "All the same"—she suddenly lowered her voice apprehensively—"we darsent start folks talking, or first thing we know they'll be saying we cheated Mom out of her widow's third because she was too ignorant to claim it!"
"How would they have dare to say that when the land come from our own mother in the first place?" pleaded Sadie. "And Danny always says we've got our moral right to all the money even if we haven't the legal right."
"Yes, and he always says, too, that if we ain't awful careful we'll have a lawsuit yet, and be forced to give a lot of our money over to Mom! Yes, I often say to Hiram, 'Better leave sleeping dogs lay,' I say, 'and not go tryin' to put Mom into the poorhouse.'"
"Yes, I guess anyhow then!" breathed Sadie.
"By to-morrow"—Jennie veered off from the precarious topic of their step-mother, for here was ice too thin for even private family handling—"we'll be getting a letter from Danny giving us the details. Say, Sadie, if he don't offer to pay our way, I ain't using my money to travel that far to his wedding."