"I respect her for it!" Carl exclaimed. "You can see that she has some talent and ambition, and that she has read some, though she is absurdly ignorant of the ways of the world. With such a husband, such a troop of children, and such poverty, I repeat I respect her for being crazy. She can't have a person to speak to but her own family, immured in those forest solitudes, as she says."
Mrs. Patten looked after them as long as she could see them, her face glowing with pride. Then she went into her house, went to the fireplace, and withdrew a pair of iron tongs that lay with red-hot tips in the coals there. "There is no need of them now," she said exultingly.
These tongs had been kept red during the last week for the better reception of any town officer who should venture to come for one of her children. Mrs. Patten did not by any means propose to submit tamely. Then she turned tragically, and faced her husband with a look of withering contempt.
"I was meant to be such a lady as that!" she exclaimed, with a grand gesture of the arm in the direction where Melicent Yorke had disappeared. "And yet, I sacrificed my birthright—fool that I was!—to marry you, Joe Patten!"
Joe shrank, and hugged the baby up to him. "I know you did, Sally!" he said deprecatingly—"I know you did!"
"And you never knew enough to appreciate me!" she continued in a tragic tone.
"I know I never did," answered Joe in a trembling voice—"I know it, Sally."
"Learn to respect me, then!" she said, drawing herself up. "Call me Mrs. Patten!"
"Yes, I will, I do, I have," whimpered Joe. "I—"
"Hold your tongue!" commanded his wife. "Paul, bring me those chips." And she proceeded to get supper.