“I thought maybe you would n't mind, Henrietta,” said Miss Susan, “seeing as how Johnnie tells me you and him are going to be married almost right away.”
“Cave-man business, Henrietta,” Johnnie repeated. “You see it's no use trying to fight me. I'm a rough one. I always have my way. An Alberson is an Alberson.”
“But you can't do this thing!” Henrietta exclaimed. She would not be driven in this way. “You cannot hand a child around as if he was a chattel, passing him from one to another. There is such a thing as the law, and there are a father's rights. A child cannot be pawned. I'll see his father. I'll—”
Harvey Redding, waving his palm-leaf fan, opened the door that led from the kitchen garden and came into the kitchen. Miss Susan turned her head.
“Umph!” she said scornfully. “It's about time you showed up, I expect. A nice sort of a saint you are, ain't you? A pretty saint you are, runnin' off no one knows where to, and—”
“Now, Susan,” said Harvey pleadingly, “I ain't no saint no more—”
“And leaving your son to be passed back and forth—”
“Now, you hold on!” said Harvey. “Don't you go tongue-lashin' me that way. I said I was n't no saint, an' I ain't, an' I'm liable to say what I feel like if you get me mad. You don't understand the first principles of bein' a saint, Susan Redding, an' you've got no right to criticize one. I've been one, an' I know. You're a nice one to talk about Lem, when all the time I've been wearin' my brain to a frazzle tryin' to figger out what would be best for him, goin' an' mortifying my flesh so I could be a saint an' he could be proud of me, an' goin' into the junk business an' out of it an' into it again. Don't you talk about saints! Why, dod-baste it, Susan! I'm more of a saint now that I ain't one than I was when I was one. Ain't I brought you the money right now to redeem Lem back?”
“You brought the money?”
Harvey tossed it into his sister's lap with a grand gesture.