"Are you not ashamed, Stephen Palmer, to ask such a thing of me?"
"You, a strong young man, with only yourself to support, ask me, a weak woman, dependent upon a boy for support, to lend you money?"
"I'll pay it back 'morrow or next day."
"You know very well you would do no such thing. You would spend it in a drunken carouse with your disorderly companions. No, Stephen Palmer, I have no money for you, or such as you."
"Is that the way you treat a son of yourn?"
"You are no son of mine. You are my step-son, but your bad conduct troubled your father for years before his death. You have no claim upon me or mine."
Stephen eyed her with dull anger. Even in his drunken condition he felt the severity of her words.
"I say, Mrs. Palmer, what did you do with my father's money—the money that ought to have come to me? You cheated me out of it, and you are livin' in luxury, while I have no home."
"You know very well," said Mrs. Palmer, disdainfully, "that your poor father left no property, except the little furniture you see in these poor rooms. He might have been in good circumstances had you not involved him in losses, and reduced him to poverty by your bad courses."