Page:Icebound.pdf/26

14

Not again!

If she ever spoiled anybody it was him, and she ’s had to pay for it, Sometimes it looks like it was a sort of a judgment.

There has n’t been a Jordan, before Ben, who ’s disgraced the name in more ’n a hundred years; he stands indicted before the Grand Jury for some of his drunken devilment. If he had n’t run away, like the criminal he is, he ’d be in the State’s Prison now, down to Thomaston. Don’t talk Ben to me, after the way he broke mother’s heart, and hurt my credit!

I don’t remember him very well. Mother thought it better I should n’t come around last time he was here; but he looked real nice in his uniform.

It was his bein’ born so long after us that made him seem like an outsider; father and mother had n’t had any children for years and years! Of course I never want to sit in judgment on my own parents, but I never approved of it; it never seemed quite—what I call proper.

(to Emma)

Mother, don’t you think I ’d better leave the room?

(angrily)

Not if half the stories I ’ve heard about you are true, I don’t.

Come, come, no rows! Is this a time or place for spite? We ’ve always been a united family, we ’ve