Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/106

102 "Who's sayin' a word against yo' baby?" asked Rolfe Bolling, filling the doorway with his great hulk. He looked in reality like a huge fat baby except for the grizzled fringe of a two weeks growth of beard. Nature had given him handsome features with which to begin life, but overindulgence had succeeded in taking from him any claim to good looks that might have been his.

"This white ooman's a sayin' yo' own son is better'n what you is," declared Aunt Peachy.

Elizabeth had made no such statement, but she scorned to contradict the old woman, especially since she was quite sure her son was a hundred times better than his father.

"How you know he's so much better'n what I is?" demanded Rolfe, blustering like a conceited boy. "You ain't seen him for mos' fo' years. Thar ain't no tellin' what a boy will come to in that time. He sho' is spent a power of money an' I ain't a doubt that women an' drink is whar it's gone."

"Much money!" exclaimed Elizabeth scornfully. "He has had barely sufficient to keep body and soul together and has had to work very hard to make enough to buy clothes and the necessary books."

"That ain't a makin' him better'n his pappy,"