It's proper for those who sin to suffer in this world that they may be
humble for the next."

"I don't want to be humble," Nettie told her. "The Ammidons aren't
humble. Mrs. Saltonstone isn't." A pain deepened visibly on the elder's
pale countenance. "You mustn't think it doesn't hurt me, Nettie, to--to
see you away from all the pleasure. It tears at my heart dreadful. That
is part of the punishment." The girl made a vivid gesture, "But you sit
back and take it!" she cried. "You talk of it as punishment. I won't! I
won't! I'm going to do something different."

"What?" her mother demanded, terrified.

"I don't know," Nettie admitted. "But if I had it to do over I'd kiss
Gerrit Ammidon as soon as he looked for it."

"Nettie, do you--do you think he wanted to marry you?"

"Yes," she answered shortly. "He's like that. Whatever you might say
against him he's honest."

Her mother began to cry, large slow tears that rolled out of her eyes
without a sound. She sat with lax hopeless hands in her lap of cheap worn
dress stuff. Nettie Vollar felt no impulse toward crying; she was bright
with anger--anger at what Barzil Dunsack had done with her mother, at the
harm he had worked in her. "You are a saint compared to Uncle Edward,"
she asserted. "I don't know what's wrong with him, but there is
something."

"I've noticed it too: times his eyes are glazed like, and then his