“Yes,” I says, “Too bad it wasn’t me instead of him. You’d be a lot better off.”
“You say things like that to hurt me,” she says. “I deserve it though. When they began to sell the land to send Quentin to Harvard I told your father that he must make an equal provision for you. Then when Herbert offered to take you into the bank I said, Jason is provided for now, and when all the expense began to pile up and I was forced to sell our furniture and the rest of the pasture, I wrote her at once because I said she will realise that she and Quentin have had their share and part of Jason’s too and that it depends on her now to compensate him. I said she will do that out of respect for her father. I believed that, then. But I’m just a poor old woman; I was raised to believe that people would deny themselves for their own flesh and blood. It’s my fault. You were right to reproach me.”
“Do you think I need any man’s help to stand on my feet?” I says, “Let alone a woman that cant name the father of her own child.”
“Jason,” she says.
“All right,” I says. “I didn’t mean that. Of course not.”
“If I believed that were possible, after all my suffering.”
“Of course it’s not,” I says. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I hope that at least is spared me,” she says.
“Sure it is,” I says, “She’s too much like both of them to doubt that.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” she says.
“Then quit thinking about it,” I says. “Has she been worrying you any more about getting out at night?”