“Tough then as it is now?”
“Tougher,” he said.
“Produces toughness the way Kansas produces corn,” I remarked. “Father?” I asked.
“Kept a saloon; a driver before that.”
“Mother a girl of the ward?”
“Yes,” he said. “She was brought up there; but she came to this country with her father from England, as a baby.”
“What sort of woman was she?”
“Quiet,” he said; “always still; silent-like; a worker. Kept the old man straight—some; and me too—‘s well as she could. She’s th’ one that got him off th’ wagon and started in th’ liquor business.”
“You were poor people?”