"You must not kneel to us. There--sit down and say no more. We
know all about it, and it's blotted out so far as we're concerned."
Her sobs--the vehement, heart-breaking sobs of a man rather than of a
woman--gradually ceased. She continued in a softer voice: "It began
'way back, when I was a little girl. Mother set me on a pedestal;
p'r'aps I'd ought to say I set myself there. It's like me to be
blaming mother. Anyways, I just thought myself a little mite cleverer
and handsomer and better than the rest o' the family. I aimed to beat
Sarah and Samanthy at whatever they undertook, and Satan let me do it.
Well, I did one good thing. I married a poor man because I loved him.
I said to myself, 'He has brains, and so have I. The dollars will
come.' But they didn't come. The children came.
"Then Sarah and Samanthy married. They married men o' means, and the
gall and wormwood entered into my soul, and ate it away. Laban was
awful good. He laughed and worked, but we couldn't make it. Times was
too hard. I'd see Samanthy trailin' silks and satins in the dust, and
--and my underskirts was made o' flour sacks.
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