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always got to be,—leavin’ Ben out, of course. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Mum! Say Mum! (He pulls at Sadie’s dress) Why should anybody want to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

Can’t you stop that boy askin’ such fool questions?

Well, as far as that goes, why should they? It never sounded reasonable to me.

(sternly)

Decent folks don’t reason about religion; they just accept it.

You could make a skin purse out of a sow’s ear, but I ’ll be darned if you could make a silk purse out of one. I ’ll bet God could n’t.

Are you going to let him talk about God like that, like he was a real person?

I don’t know as a body could expect any better; his father was a Baptist!

(angrily)

His father was a good man, and if he talked about God different from what you do, it was because he knew more about him. And as for my being here at all—(she rises with her arms about Orin)—I would n’t do it, not for anything less than my own mother’s deathbed.