"That talk's no use with me, mamma."
"Renie; you—you wouldn't do it—you wouldn't refuse him?"
Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire: "It's not me or my feelings you care anything about. Every one but me you think about first. What about me? What about me? I'm the one that's got to do the marrying and live with him. I'm the one you're trying to sell off like I was cattle. I'm the one! I'm the one!"
"Renie!"
"Yes; sell me off—sell me off—like cattle!"
Tears, blinding, scalding, searing, rushed down her cheeks, and her smooth bosom, where the wrapper fell away to reveal it, heaved with the storm beneath.
"But you can't sell me—you can't! You can't keep nagging to get me married off. I can get out, but I won't be married out! If I wasn't afraid of papa, with his heart, I'd tell him so, too. I'd tell him so now. I won't be married out—I won't be married out! I won't! I won't!"
Mrs. Shongut clasped her cheeks in the vise of her two hands. "Married out! She reproaches me yet—a mother that would go through fire for her children's happiness!"
"Always you're making me uncomfortable that I'm not married yet—not papa or Izzy, but you—you! Never does one of the girls get engaged that you don't look at me like I was wearing the welcome off the door-mat."
"Listen to my own child talk to me! No wonder you cry so hard, Renie Shongut, to talk to your mother like that—a girl that I've indulged like you. To sass her mother like that! A man like Max Hochenheimer comes along, a man where the goodness looks out of his face, a man what can give her every comfort; and, because he ain't a fine talker like that long-haired Sollie Spitz, she—"