"We mothers--Mrs. Schum--God, how we love to suffer to them!"
"We!"
Her face in the tired old lap, the little room seeming to crowd up with
voice, Lilly talked on then, until the little clock inset into a china
plate ticked out an hour, and in the kitchen, Harry, with all his old
capacity for meekness, lay asleep with his head in his arms and the
little dinner cloying on the stove.
"I'm afraid my old brain don't take it all in, Lilly. You mean your
mother--father--none of them--know?"
"It isn't for you to understand, dear. The mere telling of it has
somehow eased things. We are bits of seaweed, dear Mrs. Schum, tossed up
on the same shores. You and your fugitive from environment. Me and mine.
If your secret is to be mine, mine must be yours."
"God have mercy on you, Lilly, wherever it is your ways are leading
you."
"He has had, Mrs. Schum."
"I don't know. I don't know. You know best, I guess, what is in your
heart."
"I do. It's this. Why can't you take--us?"
"Who?"
"I want her with me. She is getting big enough for the kind of training
I have all mapped out for her.
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