"If you're playing a game," said Margaret, holding out her hand, "I'll take my share, please—two and a quarter."
"But you and I are one," said Daniel jocularly, "and what's mine is——"
"Your own?" asked Margaret as he hesitated.
Daniel laughed with appreciation of this witty retort. It was discouraging to Margaret that he always laughed when she was fatuous and never when she said a thing she considered rather good.
"And, my dear," he admonished her, "remember after this that we always put together to buy for Hiram's children. We can do better that way, not only for the children, but it comes lighter on each one of us."
Margaret did not reply. The incident, somehow, struck a chill to her heart.
"It must be," she concluded, "that Jennie and Sadie have some little income of their own and are not entirely dependent upon Daniel."
If this were true, she felt it would exonerate her from some of the forbearance she had been so carefully practising.
As they reached Millerstown just in time for the opening of the service at Hiram's church, Margaret first saw her brother-in-law from the front pew, as he stood before his congregation in his pulpit.
"You take notice," Jennie had warned her on their way from the station to the church, "how the folks in Hiram's church look when we come in and walk up to the front pew."