“I could go to New York and work in a store by day; and take stage-dancing lessons evenings,” murmured the girl. “I want to be somebody.”
“You stay here and do your chores and try to act as if you ain’t a little loonatic!” shouted Odell. “I’m sicka hearing about the capers and kickups of young folks nowaday. Them gallivantins don’t go in my house. I’m sicka reading about ’em, too. And that’s that!”
“After all,” said Eris, “why do I have to do what I don’t care to do?”
“Dang it,” retorted her father, “didn’t you never hear of dooty? What d’they teach you in school?”
“Nothing much,” she replied listlessly. “Did you always want to be a farmer, daddy?”
“Hey?”
“Are you a farmer because you wanted to be? Or did you want to be something else?”
“What dinged trash you talk,” he said, disgusted. “I didn’t wanta be a blacksmith or I’da been one.”
“Why can’t I be what I’d like to be? Will you tell me why?”
Odell, speechless, resumed his newspaper. It was nearly nine o’clock and he hadn’t read half the local news and none of the column devoted to the Grange.