Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/211

 actually obliged to take the matter into our own hands, and—and run away, in fact, in order to prove our sincerity, you can hardly expect people of a different—of less—with fewer—"

"I know what you mean, Mr. Wortley," Luella said gravely. She rose to her feet, beckoning to Caroline, whose waist the girl still clasped.

"I haven't got your education," she went on, with a simple humility that became her very touchingly, "we're poor people up here, us 'natives,' and we don't get much time for books, or when we do, we're too tired to read 'em much. I don't doubt you've been to college, yourself, and you've prob'ly learnt a lot about the mistakes that's been made in the world—a lot that I wouldn't understand. But I want to tell you one thing. I'm old enough to 'a been your mother, Mr. Wortley, my oldest boy'd 'a been twenty if he'd lived—and I've buried two besides him. You'll know I've seen trouble when I tell you that I've always thought we'd saved him and Annie if we could 'a had another doctor that'd had more experience with typhoid, and that's an awful thing to feel."