"Asked you what?"
"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I
buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer,
steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."
"Mama, you--what--are you saying?"
"Alma?"
There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and
Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face
stiff with the clench of her mouth.
"Mama--you--no--no. Oh, mama--Oh--"
A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag, so that
she slanted backward, holding her throat.
"I knew it. My own child against me. Oh, God! Why was I born? My own
child against me!"
"Mama--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody."
"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when a
good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my
thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted
him."
"Mama, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like
that!"
Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then, quite frantically, into a little
scream that knotted in her throat and she was suddenly so small and
stricken, that with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she
stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.
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