The woman looked up at her, and her eyes showed a flicker of hope."Have you no other home?" Rose asked."No, Madam. My husband drowned on the trek. I'v... tried to work in the saloon, but I ... I can't do what they expect of me. You wouldn't have a piece of bread, would you?" Not with me, but we have more than enough bread at home. Mr. McGuinn, please help the children up. They can spend the night in the tack room, can't they?"Pat McGuinn knew better than to raise objections. The position with the. The market was nearly stable, and growing only slowly. You see, a lot of my competitors chose to diversify, but failed in their expansion plans and went out of business. I focused on my maintaining my core business, and I survived.“It took three idiots less than five years to drive a stable company to a point where it was nearly out of business. They bought into that whole ‘expand or die’ nonsense.“For a couple of years they were able to play accounting games that made it look like the company. Perhaps she was jealous of her daughter for being young and in love,something she maybe wished she could go back and experience again.We kept talking and drinking as a family. Judy had always beenpartial to the odd drink and was clearly pretty drunk already and shewas starting to talk about relationships and men like she was anaughty schoolgirl. I could see the embarrassment on her family’sfaces but she just kept going on and on. It got so bad that George,Lisa’s dad, came over and took away the. ”I looked at the card. The address was in the same town where I’d be going to college. I must have looked doubtful, because he said, “I realize I came on pretty strong today. I’m not always like that, I promise. It’s just that… it had been so long and… well, you looked so…”“It’s okay,” I said, managing a slight smile. “I don’t seem to be seriously injured.”He looked uncertain about how he should take that. I could tell he was having second thoughts.“Look,” I said. “Maybe it’s my turn to.