“More’n you can bear?  Don’t flatter yourself, Sammy my lad!  Not by no means it ain’t.  I wouldn’t like to have to stand up to all I could ackchelly bear.  It’s God, not us, knows how much we can stand, an’ when He gets in the good licks on us, He always leaves us with a little stren’th to spare—­to last over for the next time.  Now, I’m not a bit broke down by what you’ve told me.  I s’pose you thought you’d have me sobbin’ on your shoulder—­to give you a chanct to play up, an’ do the strong-husband act, comfortin’ his little tremblin’ wife.  Well, my lad, if you ain’t got on to it by now, that I’m no little, tremblin’ wife, you never will.  Those kind has nerves.  I only got nerve.  That’s where I’m singular, see?  A joke, Sammy!  I made it up myself.  Out of my own head, just now.  But to go back to what I was sayin’—­why should I sob on your shoulder?  There ain’t no reason for’t.  In the first place, even if you have got a spot on your lung, what’s a spot!  It ain’t the whole lung!  An’ one lung ain’t both lungs, an’ there you are!  As I make it out, even grantin’ the worst, you’re a lung-an’-then-some to the good, so where’s the use gettin’ blue?  There’s always a way out, somehow.  If we can’t do one way, we’ll do another.  Now you just cheer up, an’ don’t let Ma an’ the childern see you kinder got a knock-outer in the solar plexus, like Jeffries, an’ before you know it, there’ll be a suddent turn, an’ we’ll be atop o’ our worries, ‘stead o’ their bein’ atop o’ us.  See!  Say, just you cast your eye on them loaves!  Ain’t they grand?  Appearances may be deceitful, but if I do say it as shouldn’t, my bread certainly looks elegant this time.  Now, Sammy, get busy like a good fella!  Go in an’ amuse Francie.  The poor child is perishin’ for somethin’ to distrack her.  What with Cora an’ Sammy at school, an’ Miss Claire havin’ the Shermans so bewitched, they keep her there all day, an’ lucky for us if they leave her come home nights at all, the house is too still for a sick person.  Give Francie a drink o’ Hygee water to cool her lips, an’ tell her a yarn-like.  An’, Sammy, I wisht you’d be good to yourself, an’ have a shave.  Them prickles o’ beard reminds me o’ the insides o’ Mrs. Sherman’s big music-box.  I wonder what tune you’d play if I run your chin in.  Go on, now, an’ attend to Francie, like I told you to.  She needs to have her mind took off’n herself.”

When he was gone, Martha set her loaves aside under cover to rise, never pausing a moment to take breath, before giving the kitchen a “scrub-down” that left no corner or cranny harboring a particle of dust.  It was twilight when she finished, and “time to turn to an’ get the dinner.”

Cora and Sammy had long since returned from school.  Sammy had gone out again to play, and had just come back to find his mother taking her bread-pans from the oven.  She regarded them with doleful gaze.

“I fairly broke my own record this time for a bum bread-maker!” she muttered beneath her breath.  “This batch is the worst yet.”