Ma paled visibly.  “No, miss.  I don’t never have the rheumatiz now—­not so you’d notice it,” she said plaintively.  “Oncet I’d it thurrbl, an’ me son Sammy had it, too, loikewoise, fierce.  I’d uster lay in bed moanin’ an’ cryin’ till you’d be surprised, an’ me son Sammy, he was a’most as bad.  Well, for a week or two, Martha, she done for us the best she cud, I s’pose, but she didn’t make for to stop the pain, an’ at last one night, when me son Sammy was gruntin’, an’ I was groanin’ to beat the band, Martha, she up, all of a suddint, an’ says she, she was goin’ for to cure us of the rheumatiz, or know the reason why.  An’ she went, an’ got the karrysene-can, an’ she poured out two thurrbl big doses, an’ she stood over me son Sammy an’ I, till we swalleyed it down, an’ since ever we tuk it, me an’ Sammy ain’t never had a retur-rn.  Sometimes I have a sharp twinge o’ somethin’ in me leg or me arrm, but it ain’t rheumatiz, an’ I wouldn’t like for me son Sammy’s wife to be knowin’ it, for the very sight of her startin’ for the karrysene—­if it’s only to fill the lamp, is enough to make me gullup, an’ I know it’s the same wit’ me son Sammy, though we never mention the subjeck between us.”

“But if your son didn’t want to take the stuff,” Claire said, trying to hide her amusement, “why didn’t he stand up and say so?  He’s a man.  He’s much bigger and stronger than his wife.  How could she make him do what he didn’t want to?”

The question was evidently not a new one to Ma.

“That’s what annywan’d naturrly think,” she returned promptly.  “But that’s because they wouldn’t be knowin’ me son Sammy’s wife.  It ain’t size, an’ it ain’t stren’th—­it’s just, well, Martha.  There’s that about her you wouldn’t like to take any chances wit’.  Perhaps it’s the thing manny does be talkin’ of these days.  Perhaps it’s that got a holt of her.  Annyhow, she says she’s in for’t.  They does be callin’ it Woman Sufferrich, I’m told.  In my day a dacint body’d have thought shame to be discoursin’ in public to the men.  They held their tongues, an’ let their betthers do the colloguein’, but Martha says some of the ladies she works for says, if they talk about it enough the men will give them their rights, an’ let ’em vote.  I’m an old woman, an’ I never had much book-learnin’, but I’m thinkin’ one like me son Sammy’s wife has all the rights she needs wit’out the votin’.  She goes out worrkin’, same’s me son Sammy, day in, day out.  She says Sammy could support her good enough, but she won’t raise her childern in a teniment, along wit’ th’ low companions.  Me son Sammy, he has it harrd these days.  He’d not be able to pay for such a grrand flat as this, in a dacint, quiet neighborhood, an’ so Martha turrns to, an’ lends a hand.  An’ wance, when me son Sammy was sick, an’ out av a job entirely, Martha, she run the whole concern herself.  She wouldn’t let me son Sammy give up, or get down-hearted, like he mighta done.  She said it was her right to care for us all, an’ him, too, bein’ he was down an’ out, like he was.  It seems to me that’s fairrly all the rights anny woman’d want—­to look out for four childern, an’ a man, an’ a mother-in-law.  But if Martha wants to vote, too, why, I’m thinkin’ she will.”