“Elmer, it’s her money.”
“’Tain’t. It’s mine.”
“It’s her heifer-money——”
“She shan’t have it! Not till she’s twenty-one. And that’s that!”
Mazie looked at her husband in a distressed way, her black eyes full of tears:
“Elmer, you can’t use a girl like a boy. A girl’s a tender thing. And I was afraid of this—something like this.... Because Eris is a mite different. She likes to read and study. She likes to figure out what she reads about. She likes music and statues and art-things like the hand-painted pictures we saw in Utica. There’s no harm in art, I guess.... And you know how she always did love to dress up for church plays—and how nicely she sang and danced and acted in school——”
“Dang it all!” shouted Odell, beating one tanned fist within the other palm, “let her come home and cut her capers! She can do them things when there’s a entertainment down to the church, can’t she?
“That’s enough for any girl, ain’t it? And she can go to Utica and look at them hand-painted pitchers in the store windows. And she can dance to socials and showers like sensible girls and she can sing her head off Sundays in church when she’s a mind to!
“All she’s gotta do is come home and git the best of everything. But as long as she acts crazy and stays away, I’m done with her. And that’s that!”