"If I would just what?" I says.
"Whatever I do, it's your fault," she says. "If I'm bad, it's because I had to be.
You made me.
I wish I was dead.
I wish we were all dead." Then she ran.
We heard her run up the stairs.
Then a door slammed.
"That's the first sensible thing she ever said," I says.
"She didn't go to school today," Mother says.
"How do you know?" I says. "Were you down town?"
"I just know," she says. "I wish you could be kinder to her."
"If I did that I'd have to arrange to see her more than once a day," I says.
"You'll have to make her come to the table every meal.
Then I could give her an extra piece of meat every time."
"There are little things you could do," she says.
"Like not paying any attention when you ask me to see that she goes to school?" I says.
"She didn't go to school today," she says. "I just know she didn't.
She says she went for a car ride with one of the boys this afternoon and you followed her."
"How could I," I says. "When somebody had my car all afternoon?
Whether or not she was in school today is already past," I says. "If you've got to worry about it, worry about next Monday."
"I wanted you and she to get along with one another," she says. "But she has inherited all of the headstrong traits.
Quentin's too.
I thought at the time, with the heritage she would already have, to give her that name, too.
Sometimes I think she is the judgment of both of them upon me."
"Good Lord," I says. "You've got a fine mind.
No wonder you keep yourself sick all the time."
"What?" she says. "I dont understand."
"I hope not," I says. "A good woman misses a lot she's better off without knowing."
"They were both that way," she says. "They would make interest with your father against me when I tried to correct them.
He was always saying they didn't need controlling, that they already knew what cleanliness and honesty were, which was all that anyone could hope to be taught.
And now I hope he's satisfied."
"You've got Ben to depend on," I says. "Cheer up."
"They deliberately shut me out of their lives," she says. "It was always her and Quentin.
They were always conspiring against me.
Against you too, though you were too young to realise it.
They always looked on you and me as outsiders, like they did your Uncle Maury.
I always told your father that they were allowed too much freedom, to be together too much.
When Quentin started to school we had to let her go the next year, so she could be with him.
She couldn't bear for any of you to do anything she couldn't.
It was vanity in her, vanity and false pride.
And then when her troubles began I knew that Quentin would feel that he had to do something just as bad.
But I didn't believe that he would have been so selfish as to--I didn't dream that he--"
"Maybe he knew it was going to be a girl," I says. "And that one more of them would be more than he could stand."
"He could have controlled her," she says. "He seemed to be the only person she had any consideration for.
But that is a part of the judgment too, I suppose."
"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.