Then you won't have anything to do but take care of the children.

For that matter, if you find a good man, you can marry and take it easy while he runs the ranch." And from such largess, dispensed from his future, Martin turned and took his one good suit of clothes to the pawnshop.

His plight was desperate for him to do this, for it cut him off from Ruth.

He had no second-best suit that was presentable, and though he could go to the butcher and the baker, and even on occasion to his sister's, it was beyond all daring to dream of entering the Morse home so disreputably apparelled.
He toiled on, miserable and well-nigh hopeless.

It began to appear to him that the second battle was lost and that he would have to go to work.
In doing this he would satisfy everybody--the grocer, his sister, Ruth, and even Maria, to whom he owed a month's room rent.