But take the shine off
that creature? Clip the wings of her spirit? Fatten her little soul back
there in that sluggish environment? She'd hate it as I hated! Oh you
must have seen for yourself that Sunday I took you out there. The little
live stars in her eyes. The plunge and rear to her little body. Never!
She's mine! We two! Out on the open road!"
"I shouldn't want the responsibility of rearing my child in a paid
institution if I had better to offer."
"I haven't better! I've proved to myself, Mrs. Blair, to what limit I
would go to--to save her from back there. Proved it--horribly! No--no,
she's mine. No, not even mine. She belongs to herself. As soon as her
little brain is ready to take it in, she shall decide; but until
then--she's mine."
"Lilly--Lilly--a father ignorant of his child!"
"They'd suck us back, I tell you! Self-preservation even against family
is a first law of life! Owls eat their young! So can human beings feed
on the thing they love. It's not these first years would matter. But
ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. They would hitch her vision, not to
a star, but to a--a tin dipper.
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