"Yes, it looks like it runs in the blood—not in mine, thank the Lord! for I wish nary woman had ever been made; yes, all of my boys no sooner got out o' frocks than they made a dead-run for the first old maid in sight, and marry they would in spite of all possessed."
"And not one got hitched up exactly right," said Henley.
"Not one, Alfred. The two oldest stuck to their hot-headed agreement long enough to feel sort o' tied down, and they went clean off an' left their wives high and dry. Jim is still living with his'n, but I cry my eyes out every time I see the pore fellow. Looks like he hain't got a thing to live for. When a man leaves his own fireside and comes and sets around his mammy's house like Jim does, he hain't got no paradise under his own roof. Ef he'd 'a' had children it mought 'a' been different. I did think I could show Johnny the mistakes of his brothers and make him act different. I've talked it to him sence he was old enough to know right from wrong, but you see how little weight it had."
"Why don't you go to headquarters and call a halt?" Henley's indignation was rising.
"You mean to Carrie? Well, I did, but somehow she manages to git around the question. She jest looks kind o' 'shamed and keeps wanting to talk about other things. I ought to be sorry for her, desperate as she is for attention, but I hain't. She's a tattle-tale and scandalmonger. She never got over losin' that young preacher that Dixie Hart cut her out of, and she spends all her time hammerin' at that pore girl, who is good and decent and noble, if thar ever was sech a thing. Just here lately, because you seed fit to take Dixie with you over to Carlton—"
"Oh, I know—I know." Henley's face grew darker, and he clinched his hand. "I can't think of her bell-clapper tongue without gettin' mad, and I don't like to be that way with a woman. What does Johnny say?"
"Oh, he talks as big as a railroad president; he talks jest the same foolishness as his brothers did; he's doin' the marryin'—nobody else has a'thing to do with it. That's what hurts. If I could jest git the pore, simple boy out of her clutches for a month I believe I could open his eyes, but I am afraid at the slightest move they will run off and git married. Sometimes I try to be resigned and argue to myself that maybe him and her could git along together, but when I see my pore baby-boy with that powdered and painted thing out in public I mighty nigh die with mortification."
"We must simply bust it up, Mrs. Cartwright," Henley said, firmly. "That's all there is about it. We must checkmate 'em. Let me study over it. I'll help if I can."
"I wish you would," the woman said, anxiously. "There he is now in the front-door. I'll slip out the side way; he mought suspicion I was talkin' about him."
A moment after her departure Johnny Cartwright came back to the desk. "Jim said Ma was here," he said, glancing around the room.