She put her apron up to her face and burst out crying now. Her mother heart had at last conquered her fear of her husband.
“I hain’t a-lookin’ fer comfort, Marthy,” said the old farmer, stubbornly. “The facts of the case is clear, an’ we’ve got tew face ’em!”
“Yew mean we’ve got tew leave the old home an’ go tew the Poor Farm, I s’pose,” was the answer. “Oh, Joshuy! It’s hard, an’ I ain’t done nothin’ tew deserve it!”
Joshua Marlowe arose and paced the floor excitedly. For the first time in his life he began to feel the twinges of a rebuking conscience.
Only two years before he had been a fairly prosperous farmer, with a good wife and three of the prettiest daughters to be found in that section.
When Tom Wilders, a lean, lanky, close-fisted farmer from his own town, asked to marry Samantha; he gave her to him without a word, and his eldest daughter, who inherited her mother’s meekness, accepted him for a husband, knowing that she loathed the fellow.
Only a little while after the marriage, Tom Wilders called on the deacon. His interview with his father-in-law was strictly private, but in some way it cost the deacon exactly five hundred dollars.
Where he got the money no one knew for a time, but very soon Silas Johnson, another neighbor, began suing boldly for the hand of Dollie Marlowe.
Dollie was only seventeen, but she had more spirit than Samantha, and, better yet, she had her sister Marion to protect her.
For what the rest of the women of the Marlowe family lacked in spirit, beautiful, gray-eyed Marion made up in full. As she grew older she developed the determination of her father, but it was backed by honor and good judgment, and her love for her twin sister made her as fearless as a lion.