[…] for 15 years Miss Lulu Bett, a stereotypical spinster and poor relation, has been slaving in her married sister's home as an unindentured cook and housemaid.

“Helluv it is,” he grumbled. “I was thinking of marrying her myself. Wrote her a letter, but it didn't get posted in time.”

his eyes were heavy with sleep; she was heavy with child

It was the nicest-looking property Elwood had ever seen—a real school, a good one, not the forbidding reformatory he’d conjured the last few weeks.