rfed, he had let Pussy twine him about her little finger
ever since the afternoon when he had first seen her, small, trim, and
with "a way with her," at the age of six.

"Poor, poor child," said Pussy, cuddling Jane and the baby together
against her sympathetic bosom. "Something must be done, Cousin Fanny.
Something must be done, as Mr. Wrenn said on the way down, if it's only
for the satisfaction of letting Charley know what we think of him."

"We've got to put down our pride and take some step," declared Jimmy,
wondering vaguely how he could have forgotten the spirited utterance his
wife attributed to him. "I'm all for the authority of the husband, of
course, and the sanctity of the home, and everything according to the
Bible and all that--but, bless my soul, there's got to be a limit to
what a woman is expected to stand. There're some things, and I know
Uncle Meriweather will agree with me, that it isn't in human nature to
put up with."

"If I were forty years younger I'd call him out and give him a whipping
he wouldn't forget in a jiffy," blustered Uncle Meriweather, feebly
violent. "There's no way of defending a lady in these Godforsaken days.
Why, I remember when I was a boy, my poor father--God bless him!--you
recollect him, don't you Fanny?--never used a walking stick in his life
and could read print without glasses at ninety--"

"Making love to the dressmaker," pursued Jimmy, whose righteous anger
refused to be turned aside from its end.

"Don't you think, Cousin Fanny," whispered Pussy, "that Gabriella had
better leave the room?"

"Gabriella? Why, how on earth can we spare her?" Mrs. Carr whispered
back rather nervously. Then, beneath Pussy's compelling glance, she
added timidly: "Hadn't you better go, darling, and see what the children
are doing?"

"They are playing in the laundry," replied Gabriella reassuringly. "I
told Dolly not to let them go out of her sight."

"She knows so much already for her age," murmured Mrs. Carr
apologetically to Pussy.

"I don't k

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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