"Other women have their children to support them in times like this," Mother says.
"You have Jason and me," he says.
"It's so terrible to me," she says. "Having the two of them like this, in less than two years."
"There, there," he says.
After a while he kind of sneaked his hand to his mouth and dropped them out the window.
Then I knew what I had been smelling.
Clove stems.
I reckon he thought that the least he could do at Father's or maybe the sideboard thought it was still Father and tripped him up when he passed.
Like I say, if he had to sell something to send Quentin to Harvard we'd all been a dam sight better off if he'd sold that sideboard and bought himself a one-armed strait jacket with part of the money.
I reckon the reason all the Compson gave out before it got to me like Mother says, is that he drank it up.
At least I never heard of him offering to sell anything to send me to Harvard.
So he kept on patting her hand and saying
"Poor little sister", patting her hand with one of the black gloves that we got the bill for four days later because it was the twenty-sixth because it was the same day one month that Father went up there and got it and brought it home and wouldn't tell anything about where she was or anything and Mother crying and saying
"And you didn't even see him?
You didn't even try to get him to make any provision for it?" and Father says
"No she shall not touch his money not one cent of it" and Mother says
"He can be forced to by law.
He can prove nothing, unless--Jason Compson," she says.
"Were you fool enough to tell--"
"Hush, Caroline," Father says, then he sent me to help Dilsey get that old cradle out of the attic and I says,
"Well, they brought my job home tonight" because all the time we kept hoping they'd get things straightened out and he'dfool keep her because Mother kept saying she would at least have enough regard for the family not to jeopardise my chance after she and Quentin had had theirs.
"And whar else do she belong?" Dilsey says. "Who else gwine raise her cep me?
Aint I raised ev'y one of y'all?"
"And a dam fine job you made of it," I says. "Anyway it'll give her something to sure enough worry over now." So we carried the cradle down and Dilsey started to set it up in her old room.
Then Mother started sure enough.
"Hush, Miss Cahline," Dilsey says. "You gwine wake her up."
"In there?" Mother says. "To be contaminated by that atmosphere?
It'll be hard enough as it is, with the heritage she already has."
"Hush," Father says. "dont be silly."
"Why aint she gwine sleep in here," Dilsey says. "In the same room whar I put her maw to bed ev'y night of her life since she was big enough to sleep by herself."
"You dont know," Mother says. "To have my own daughter cast off by her husband.
Poor little innocent baby," she says, looking at Quentin. "You will never know the suffering you've caused."
"Hush, Caroline," Father says.
"What you want to go on like that fo Jason fer?" Dilsey says.
"I've tried to protect him," Mother says. "I've always tried to protect him from it.
At least I can do my best to shield her."
"How sleepin in dis room gwine hurt her, I like to know," Dilsey says.
"I cant help it," Mother says. "I know I'm just a troublesome old woman.
But I know that people cannot flout God's laws with impunity."
"Nonsense," Father says. "Fix it in Miss Caroline's room then, Dilsey."
"You can say nonsense," Mother says. "But she must never know.
She must never even learn that name.
Dilsey, I forbid you ever to speak that name in her hearing.
If she could grow up never to know that she had a mother, I would thank God."
"dont be a fool," Father says.
"I have never interfered with the way you brought them up," Mother says. "But now I cannot stand anymore.
We must decide this now, tonight.
Either that name is never to be spoken in her hearing, or she must go, or I will go.
Take your choice."
"Hush," Father says. "You're just upset.