"He can help your father. He can be the night fireman."
She shrugged her shoulders with the fatalistic movement he was beginning to recognize. "Father won't need a night fireman by that time."
He could only say: "All the same, your mother must be watched. She can't be allowed to throw herself from Duck Rock, now, can she?"
"I don't say allowed. But if she did—"
"Well, what then?"
"She'd be out of it. That would be something."
"Admitting that it would be something for her, what would it be for your father and you?"
She relaxed the energy of her hands. He had time to notice them. It hurt him to see anything so shapely coarsened with hard work. "Wouldn't it be that much?" she asked, as if reaching a conclusion. "If she were out of it, it would be a gain all round."
Never having heard a human being speak like this, he was shocked. "But everything can't be so black. There must be something somewhere."
She glanced up at him obliquely. Months afterward he recalled the look. Her tone, when she spoke, seemed to be throwing him a challenge as well as making an admission. "Well, there is—one thing."