"I do. He's spoilt my life for me. We hate each other, but he hated me first."
"There's more life before than behind you."
"Perhaps, but I'll never be a boy again. I'll never have been young at all. I can't remember anything of him but his scowling face and his drinking fits."
"There are worse men."
"Who do less harm. I believe that."
"Your mother cares for him."
"You think that proves him good. It just proves nothing. And I wish she didn't. If she hadn't watched over him, he might have killed himself long ago. And now he's tired of getting quietly drunk, and he's gone off, and the devil knows where he's gone to. I believe he's mad, but I'll not be his gaoler. I'll neither look for him, nor be glad when he comes back; if I saw him walking straight for death, I'd not touch his coat-tails to keep him back."
"Be quiet!" Edward Webb put up his hand, and there was command in his voice. "Tell me what's happened, and don't stain your mouth with talk like that."
"I'll stain it with no lies, and can you not see that I must speak? Do I talk to my mother like this? I just hold my tongue, but you're the only friend I've got, and if you'll not let me talk to you I'll just have to murder him. I've got to do something. Drunkenness, what's that? It's little enough with some men; I'm not blaming him for that. It's the black selfishness of the beast that angers me. Anger! It isn't anger; it's something hard and hot that's been growing in me since ever I can mind, when he didn't answer my questions and left my mother alone. I've seen her cry. And I've seen him blubbering over her, sorry for himself, not for her! Well, he went off two days ago. A kind of fever took him. He said he couldn't stay, and when she tried to stop him he shook her off. He said, "I'm my father's son"; he kept saying it—"I'm my father's son. He came and went like the wind." And my mother says my grandfather used to wander off when the drinking fits came over him, and no one knew where he went nor when he would come back. So now she's still more to bear. I hope I'm not my father's son. For two nights I don't believe she's slept—she's listening for him. I'm glad you've come. She wouldn't let me stay away from school; she said it would be better if he came back and didn't find me here; so I went. It's important for me to get that scholarship, you see, but if he's playing these tricks all this next year, well, I'll just have to practise forgetting, when I'm working."
"If you learn to do that, you'll have a valuable possession. Is there anything we can do?"