something, you've got it to do. You sign your name on that line.'
She took the pen, but instead of signing it she just stood there with her head bent and the pen shaking in her hand. Just like her mother. 'Oh, God,' she says, 'oh, God.'
'Yes,' I says. 'That's one thing you'll have to learn if you never learn anything else. Sign it now, and get on out of here.'
She signed it. 'Where's the money?' she says. I took the order and blotted it and put it in my pocket. Then I gave her the ten dollars.
'Now you go on back to school this afternoon, you hear?' I says. She didn't answer. She crumpled the bill up in her hand like it was a rag or something and went on out the front door just as Earl came in. A customer came in with him and they stopped up front. I gathered up the things and put on my hat and went up front.
'Been much busy?' Earl says.
'Not much,' I says. He looked out the door.
'That your car over yonder?' he says. 'Better not try to go out home to dinner. We'll likely have another rush just before the show opens. Get you a lunch at Rogers' and put a ticket in the drawer.'
'Much obliged,' I says. 'I can still manage to feed myself, I reckon.'
And right there he'd stay, watching that door like a hawk until I came through it again. Well, he'd just have to watch it for a while; I was doing the best I could. The time before I says that's the last one now; you'll have to remember to get some more right away. But who can remember anything in all this hurrah. And now this dam show had to come here the one day I'd have to hunt all over town for a blank check, besides all the other things I had to do to keep the house running, and Earl watching the door like a hawk.
I went to the printing shop and told him I wanted to play a joke on a fellow, but he didn't have anything. Then he told me to have a look in the old opera house, where somebody had stored a lot of papers and junk out of the old Merchants' and Farmers' Bank when it failed, so I dodged up a few more alleys so Earl couldn't see me and finally found old man Simmons and got the key from him and went up there and dug around. At last I found a pad on a Saint Louis bank. And of course she'd pick this one time to look at it close. Well, it would have to do. I couldn't waste any more time now.
I went back to the store. 'Forgot some papers Mother wants to go to the bank,' I says. I went back to the desk and fixed the check. Trying to hurry and all, I says to myself it's a good thing her eyes are giving out, with that little whore in the house, a Christian forbearing woman like Mother. I says you know just as well as I do what she's going to grow up into but I says that's your business, if you want to keep her and raise her in your house just because of Father. Then she would begin to cry and say it was her own flesh and blood so I just says All right. Have it your way. I can stand it if you can.
I fixed the letter up again and glued it back and went out.
'Try not to be gone any longer than you can help,' Earl says.
'All right,' I says. I went to the telegraph office. The smart boys were all there.
'Any of you boys made your million yet?' I says.
'Who can do anything, with a market like that?' Doc says.
'What's it doing?' I says. I went in and looked. It was three points under the opening. 'You boys are not going to let a little thing like the cotton market beat you, are you?' I says. 'I thought you were too smart for that.'
'Smart, hell,' Doc says. 'It was down twelve points at twelve oclock. Cleaned me out.'
'Twelve points?' I says. 'Why the hell didn't somebody let me know? Why didn't you let me know?' I says to the operator.
'I take it as it comes in,' he says. 'I'm not running a bucket shop.'
'You're smart, aren't you?' I says. 'Seems to me, with the money I spend with you, you could take time to call me up. Or maybe your dam company's in a conspiracy with those dam eastern sharks.'
He didn't say anything. He made like he was busy.
'You're getting a little too big for your pants,' I says. 'First thing you know you'll be working for a living.'
'What's the matter with you?' Doc says. 'You're still three points to the good.'
'Yes,' I says. 'If I happened to be selling. I haven't mentioned that yet, I think. You boys all cleaned out?'
'I got caught twice,' Doc says. 'I switched just in time.'
'Well,' I. O. Snopes says. 'I've picked hit; I reckon taint no more than fair fer hit to pick me once in a while.'
So I left them buying and selling among themselves at a nickel a point. I found a nigger and sent him for my car and stood on the corner and waited. I couldn't see Earl looking up and down the street, with one eye on the clock, because I couldn't see the door from here. After about a week he got back with it.
'Where the hell have you been?' I says. 'Riding around where the wenches could see you?'
'I come straight as I could,' he says. 'I had to drive clean around the square, wid all dem wagons.'
I never found a nigger yet that didn't have an airtight alibi for whatever he did. But just turn one loose in a car and he's bound to show off. I got in and went on around the square. I caught a glimpse of Earl in the door across the square.
I went straight to the kitchen and told Dilsey to hurry up with dinner.
'Quentin aint come yit,' she says.
'What of that?' I says. 'You'll be telling me next that Luster's not quite ready to eat yet. Quentin knows when meals are served in this house. Hurry up with it, now.'
Mother was in her room. I gave her the letter. She opened it and took the check out and sat holding it in her hand. I went and got the shovel from the corner and gave her a match. 'Come on,' I says. 'Get it over with. You'll be crying in a minute.'
She took the match, but she didn't strike it. She sat there, looking at the check. Just like I said it would be.
'I hate to do it,' she says. 'To increase your burden by adding Quentin….'
'I guess we'll get along,' I says. 'Come on. Get it over with.'
But she just sat there, holding the check.
'This one is on a different bank,' she says. 'They have been on an Indianapolis bank.'
'Yes,' I says. 'Women are allowed to do that too.'
'Do what?' she says.
'Keep money in two different banks,' I says.
'Oh,' she says. She looked at the check a while. 'I'm glad to know she's so … she has so much…. God sees that I am doing right,' she says.
'Come on,' I says. 'Finish it. Get the fun over.'
'Fun?' she says. 'When I think--'
'I thought you were burning this two hundred dollars a month for fun,' I says. 'Come on, now. Want me to strike the match?'
'I could bring myself to accept them,' she says. 'For my children's sake. I have no pride.'
'You'd never be satisfied,' I says. 'You know you wouldn't. You've settled that once, let it stay settled. We can get along.'
'I leave everything to you,' she says. 'But sometimes I become afraid that in doing this I am depriving you all of what is rightfully yours. Perhaps I shall be punished for it. If you want me to, I will smother my pride and accept them.'
'What would be the good in beginning now, when you've been destroying them for fifteen years?' I says. 'If you keep on doing it, you have lost nothing, but if you'd begin to take them now, you'll have lost fifty thousand dollars. We've got along so far, haven't we?' I says. 'I haven't seen you in the poorhouse yet.'
'Yes,' she says. 'We Bascombs need nobody's charity. Certainly not that of a fallen woman.'
She struck the match and lit the check and put it in the shovel, and then the envelope, and watched them burn.
'You dont know what it is,' she says. 'Thank God you will never know what a mother feels.'
'There are lots of women in this world no better than her,' I says.
'But they are not my daughters,' she says. 'It's not myself,' she says. 'I'd gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It's for Quentin's sake.'
Well, I could have said it wasn't much chance of anybody hurting Quentin much, but like I say I dont expect
