Jest before Lank parted with her, she fell on a broken sidewalk: some
think he tripped her up, but it never wuz proved. But anyway Serepta fell
and broke her hip hone; and her husband sued the corporation and got ten
thousand dollars for it. Of course the law give the money to him and she
never got a cent of it. But she wouldn't have made any fuss over that,
knowin' that the law of the United States wuz such. But what made it so
awful mortifyin' to her wuz, that while she wuz layin' there achin' in
splints, he took that very money and used it to court up another woman
with. Gin her presents, jewelry, bunnets, head-dresses, artificial flowers
out of Serepta's own hip money.
And I don't know as anything could be much more gauldin' to a woman than
that--while she lay there groanin' in splints, to have her husband take the
money for her own broken bones and dress up another woman like a doll with
it.
But the law gin it to him, and he wuz only availin' himself of the glorious
liberty of our free Republic, and doin' as he wuz a mind to. And it wuz
spozed that that very hip money wuz what made the match. For before she wuz
fairly out of splints he got a divorce from her and married agin. And by
the help of Serepta's hip money and the Whiskey Ring he got her two little
children away from her.
II
"THEY CAN'T BLAME HER"
And I wonder if there is a woman in the land that can blame Serepta for
gittin' mad and wantin' her rights and wantin' the Whiskey Ring broke up,
when they think how she's been fooled round with by men; willed away, and
whipped, and parted with, and stole from.
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