Page:Icebound.pdf/25

]

chance; I ’ve been stuck here till I ’m most forty, worse than if I was dead, fifty times worse! Now I ’m going to buy things—everything I want—I don’t care what—I ’ll buy it, even if it ’s a man! Anything I want!

A man!

[Nettie looks at Ella in cruel amazement and all but Orin burst into a laugh—Ella turns up and hides her face against the window as Orin pulls at his mother’s skirt.

Mum! Mum! I thought you told me not to laugh, not once, while we was here!

You ’re right, nephew, and we’re wrong, all of us. I ’m sorry, Ella, we ’re all sorry.

(wipes her eyes)

Laugh if you want to—maybe it won’t be so long before I do some of it myself.

Equally between us three? Well, poor mother knows best of course.

[He sighs.

She would n’t leave him any, would she,—Ben?

(shocked)

Ben!

(in cold anger)

She ’s a woman of her word; no!

If he was here he ’d get around her; he always did!