“Robert stands head in Hartley.  He gets bigger and broader every year.  He is better looking than a man has any business to be; and I hear the Hartley ladies give him plenty of encouragement in being stuck on himself, but I think he is true to Nancy Ellen, and his heart is all in his work.  No children.  That’s a burning shame!  Both of them feel it.  In a way, and strictly between you and me, Nancy Ellen is a disappointment to me, an’ I doubt if she ain’t been a mite of a one to him.  He had a right to expect a good deal of Nancy Ellen.  She had such a good brain, and good body, and purty face.  I may miss my guess, but it always strikes me that she falls short of what he expected of her.  He’s coined money, but she hasn’t spent it in the ways he would.  Likely I shouldn’t say it, but he strikes me as being just a leetle mite too good for her.”

“Oh, Mother!” said Kate.

“Now you lookey here,” said Mrs. Bates.  “Suppose you was a man of Robert’s brains, and education, and professional ability, and you made heaps of money, and no children came, and you had to see all you earned, and stood for, and did in a community spent on the selfishness of one woman.  How big would you feel?  What end is that for the ambition and life work of a real man?  How would you like it?”

“I never thought of such a thing,” said Kate.

“Well, mark my word, you will think of it when you see their home, and her clothes, and see them together,” said Mrs. Bates.

“She still loves pretty clothing so well?” asked Kate.

“She is the best-dressed woman in the county, and the best looking,” said Mrs. Bates, “and that’s all there is to her.  I’m free to say with her chances, I’m ashamed of what she has, and hasn’t made of herself.  I’d rather stand in your shoes, than hers, this minute, Katie.”

“Does she know I’m here?” asked Kate.

“Yes.  I stopped and told her on my way out, this morning,” said Mrs. Bates.  “I asked them to come out for Sunday dinner, and they are coming.”

“Did you deliver the invitation by force?” asked Kate.

“Now, none of your meddling,” said Mrs. Bates.  “I got what I went after, and that was all I wanted.  I’ve told her an’ told her to come to see you during the last three years, an’ I know she wanted to come; but she just had that stubborn Bates streak in her that wouldn’t let her change, once her mind was made up.  It did give us a purty severe jolt, Kate, havin’ all that good Bates money burn up.”

“I scarcely think it jolted any of you more than it did me,” said Kate dryly.

“No, I reckon it didn’t,” said Mrs. Bates.  “But they’s no use hauling ourselves over the coals to go into that.  It’s past.  You went out to face life bravely enough and it throwed you a boomerang that cut a circle and brought you back where you started from.  Our arrangements for the future are all made.  Now it’s up to us to live so that we get the most out of life for us an’ the children.  Those are mighty nice children of yours, Kate.  I take to that boy something amazin’, and the girl is the nicest little old lady I’ve seen in many a day.  I think we will like knittin’ and sewin’ together, to the top of our bent.”