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 "Her? Do you mean to tell me there's any woman that onery in the state of Missouri?"

"I think it's a question of security, rather than morals," Tom said.

"And you startin' to go away out to the Panhandle without even a change of shirts to your back!"

"Oh, mother!" said Eudora softly, a bit shocked, or making a good pretense of being, at any rate, by these personal references.

Mrs. Ellison was flushed with resentment against the hard-fisted lady in Kansas City, whose conduct in holding the trunk she took as a reflection on the world-famed hospitality of Missourians. She doubtless felt very matriarchal, although she was not more than half as old as she imagined herself to be, having nothing of the look of grandmother about her as she flicked her quick needle in and out mending the hole in the big yarn sock. Only that her years of isolation had been long, and the world of Missouri and her young days seemed very far away.

"Well, I'll tell you what you'll do, Tom Simpson," she said, laying it down with determination not to be gainsaid, "you'll stay right here on this place till you can send for that trunk. I'm not goin' to have any man wanderin' around over the country without even as much as an extra handkerchief to blow his nose on."

She paused in her work to give him a defiant look, as if daring him to set up his desires and decisions against her own.

"You are very-very kind," Tom Simpson said, his voice gentle and low.