“Look here!” Adams exclaimed. “I don't want to hear any more of that! You can't hold him responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I guess! He probably doesn't know a thing about it. You don't suppose he's troubling HIS head over——”
But she burst out at him passionately. “Suppose you trouble YOUR head about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of a heart!”
“Oh, my, my!” he groaned. “What's my heart got to do with it?”
“Nothing! You haven't got one or you'd give her what she needed. Am I asking anything you CAN'T do? You know better; you know I'm not!”
At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. “Now, tell me,” he said, slowly. “Just what ARE you asking?”
“You know!” she sobbed.
“You mean you've broken your word never to speak of THAT to me again?”
“What do I care for my word?” she cried, and, sinking to the floor at his feet, rocked herself back and forth there. “Do you suppose I'll let my 'word' keep me from struggling for a little happiness for my children? It won't, I tell you; it won't! I'll struggle for that till I die! I will, till I die till I die!”
He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, shaking all over, he got up and began with uncertain steps to pace the floor.
“Hell, hell, hell!” he said. “I've got to go through THAT again!”