"Then why don't you--every one of you, fall head over ears in love with
Judy Hatch?" she inquired.

"I don't because I loved you first, and I can't change, however badly
you treat me. I'm sometimes tempted to think, Molly, that mother is
right, and you are possessed of a devil."

"Your mother is a hard woman, and I pity the wife you bring home to
her."

The softness had gone out of her voice at the mention of Sarah's name,
and she had grown defiant and reckless.

"I don't think you are just to my mother, Molly," he said after a
moment, "she has a kind heart at bottom, and when she nags at you it is
most often for your good."

"I suppose it was for my mother's good that she kept her from going to
church and made the old minister preach a sermon against her?"

"That's an old story--you were only a month old. Can't you forget it?"

"I'll never forget it--not even at the Day of Judgment. I don't care how
I'm punished."

Her violence, which seemed to him sinful and unreasonable, reduced him
to a silence that goaded her to a further expression of anger. While
she spoke he watched her eyes shine green in the sunlight, and he told
himself that despite her passionate loyalty to her mother, the blood of
the Gays ran thicker in her veins than that of the Merryweathers. Her