“Well,” I says, “You haven’t had much luck with your system. You want me to do anything about it, or not? Say one way or the other; I’ve got to get on to work.”
“I know you have to slave your life away for us,” she says. “You know if I had my way, you’d have an office of your own to go to, and hours that became a Bascomb. Because you are a Bascomb, despite your name. I know that if your father could have forseen—”
“Well,” I says, “I reckon he’s entitled to guess wrong now and then, like anybody else, even a Smith or a Jones.” She begun to cry again.
“To hear you speak bitterly of your dead father,” she says.
“All right,” I says, “all right. Have it your way. But as I haven’t got an office, I’ll have to get on to what I have got. Do you want me to say anything to her?”
“I’m afraid you’ll lose your temper with her,” she says.
“All right,” I says, “I wont say anything, then.”
“But something must be done,” she says. “To have people think I permit her to stay out of school and run about the streets, or that I cant prevent her doing it. … Jason, Jason,” she says, “How could you. How could you leave me with these burdens.”
“Now, now,” I says, “You’ll make yourself sick. Why dont you either lock her up all day too, or turn her over to me and quit worrying over her?”
“My own flesh and blood,” she says, crying. So I says,
“All right. I’ll tend to her. Quit crying, now.”
“Dont lose your temper,” she says. “She’s just a child, remember.”