“Nonsense. It’s a dingy little shanty.”
“You can call it names if you like. I don’t care what you say. I’m going back there.”
“For good?”
“I don’t know—perhaps.”
“Well, you won’t stay, so you’d better not risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“Having to eat humble pie and come back to be forgiven.”
It was my turn to get up with a fling of exasperation and walk about. She followed me with her bright, piercing gaze.
“Think a little, Jane. Use your brains, if you can. Think of the difference between your life here and your life at home in that Godforsaken hole of St. Mary’s Plains. Look at this room. Look out of the window and remember. Don’t I remember? Wooden sidewalks with weeds growing between the boards, boys playing marbles in the street, women hanging out their washing in backyards, Sunday clothes, oh, those best Sunday clothes, revival meetings, Moody and Sankey in tents on the lake shore, picnics, bicycle rides, dances at the Country Club, freckled youths kissing you on the verandah, great news—Ethel Barrymore is coming in her new play that’s been running a year in New York. Excursions on the lake, fifty cents a round trip and soft drinks, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, buggy rides, shopping down town, talking to old women—cats who gossip about somebody’s new red silk petticoat, too flighty, indecent. All going to church and shouting ‘Hallaleluja’ and eating blueberry pie afterwards till their mouths are all black inside.”
“Well,” I said. She wriggled about as if sitting on pins.