"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff—that old-fashioned junk—if I didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, like even Alma Yawitz, and a—a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with passion and tears, rose to the crest of a sob. "I—I'd die first!"
"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars, if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can afford, but she 'ain't got the money!"
"You—have got the money!"
"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what business has been. You know how—sometimes even to make ends meet it is a pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl ever had. But I 'ain't got the money—I 'ain't got the money."
"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two."
"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's—to go back—"
"You mean the bank-book's hers?"
"That's gramaw's, to go back—home on. That's the money for me to take gramaw and her wreaths back home on."
"There you go—talking luny."
"Selene!"