"You didn't. I remember. You didn't want me to know—"
"Well," her mother said, giving in suddenly, "if I didn't, it was because I thought it would make you even more conceited than you were. I don't suppose I was very well pleased with you at the time."
"Still—you kept it."
But her mother was not even going to admit that she had kept it.
She said, "I must have overlooked it. But we can burn it now."
She carried it across the room to the fire. She didn't want even now—even now. You saw again the old way of it, her little obstinate, triumphant smile, the look that paid you out, that said, "See how I've sold you."
The violet ashen sheet clung to the furred soot of the chimney: you could still see the blenched letters.
She couldn't really have thought it would make you conceited. That was only what she wanted to think she had thought.
"It wasn't easy to make you pleased with me all the time…. Still, I can't think why on earth you weren't pleased."
She knelt before the fire, watching the violet ashen bit of burnt-out paper, the cause, the stupid cause of it all.