"I hope you'll be happy, kid," she said, as they talked over plans. "But
I doubt it, with him. You want more than I do--"
"I want everything," said Marcella, decidedly.
"I don't care so long's my back isn't too bad, and he scrubs down for
me, and I can pay my way. I've got this house paying proper now, and the
young chaps treat me as if I was their mother."
Marcella felt it was well that she was getting away from this atmosphere
of dull acceptance of misery, of the worst in life. Anyway, she told
herself, she would make a quick end to things with fire or knife before
she got like that. Expediently keeping a drunken man quiet; expediently
kissing him and fondling him for fear he would get drunk again to-morrow
in spite or pique: content with a man who would scrub floors for a
"livener"! It was better, far, to be homeless wanderers in the Bush
where there was no need to be expedient for the sake of others, where
they would have to stand up on their own intrinsic strength or fall;
where they need not be respectable and where she could, if he were weak,
alternately shake him up and soothe him without spectators. She would
never, never, never allow herself to get into this cringing habit of
being thankful for the small mercies of life when the big justices of
life were there, so very big and shining.
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