interrupted his you got to give us two dollars and he got it a week later a to a window of the and the out of the darkness frightened into screaming since then in four months she had beheld hanging a cat stealing throwing at the house and making tracks across the lawn and had heard him explaining the mysteries of generation with great and knowledge he was in fact a museum specimen of what a small town a well public school a tradition of hearty humor and a pious mother could produce from the material of a courageous and ingenious mind was afraid of him far from protesting when he set his on a she worked hard at not seeing him the was a shed with paint tools a lawn and ancient of hay above it was a which and earl young brother of harry used as a den for smoking hiding from and planning secret societies they climbed to it by a ladder on the alley side of the shed this morning of late january two or three weeks after s revelations had gone into the stable to find a hammer snow softened her step she heard voices in the above her ah � oh go down the lake and some out of somebody s traps was yawning and get our ears beat off grumbled earl these are member when we were just and used to smoke corn silk and spit silence say earl ma says if you tobacco you get consumption aw rats your old lady is a that s so pause but she says she knows a that did aw didn t used to tobacco all the time before he married this here girl from the cities he used to spit some shot he could hit a tree ten feet off this was news to the girl from the cities m m main street say how is she continued earl how s who you know who i mean a a of loose boards silence weary from mrs oh she s all right i guess relief to below e a o cake one time but ma says she s stuck up as hell ma s always talking about her ma says if mrs thought as much about the as she does about her clothes the wouldn t look so spit silence s always talking about her too from she says mrs thinks she knows it all says she has to laugh till she almost bursts every time she sees mr along the street with that take a look � i m a swell skirt way she s got but i don t pay no attention to she s n a ma was telling somebody that she heard that mrs claimed she made forty dollars a week when she was on some job in the cities and ma says she knows that she never made but eighteen a week � ma says that when she s lived here a while she won t go round making a fool of herself pulling that stuff on folks that know a whole lot more than she does they re all laughing up their sleeves at her say notice how mrs around the house other evening when i was coming over here she d forgot to pull down the curtain and i watched her for ten minutes you d a died laughing she was there all alone and she must a spent five minutes getting a picture straight it was funny as hell the way she d stick out her finger to the picture � see my finger oh my ain t i what a fine long tail my cat s but say earl she s some good just the same and o the glad rags she must of bought for her wedding notice these low cut dresses and these thin she wears i had a good at em when they were out on the line with the wash and some ankles she s got then fled in her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discuss even her garments her body e felt that she was being dragged naked down main street the moment it was dusk she pulled down the all the shades flush with the sill but beyond them she felt moist eyes m she remembered and tried to forget and remembered more sharply the vulgar detail of her husband s having observed the ancient customs of the land by tobacco she would have preferred a prettier vice � gambling or a mistress for these she might have found a luxury of forgiveness she could not remember any wicked hero of fiction who tobacco asserted that it proved him to be a man of the bold free west she tried to him with the hairy heroes of the motion pictures she curled on the couch a softness in the twilight and fought herself and lost the battle did not identify him with riding the it merely bound him to � to the tailor and the but he gave it up for me oh what does it matter we re all filthy in some things i think of myself as so superior but i do eat and i do wash my dirty and scratch i m not a cool slim goddess on a column there aren t any he gave it up for me he stands by me believing that every one loves me he s the rock of ages � in a storm of meanness t s driving me mad it will drive me mad all evening she sang scotch to and when she noticed that he was an cigar she smiled at his secret she could not escape asking in the exact words and mental which a thousand million women and mischief making queens had used before her and which a million million women will know hereafter was it au a horrible mistake my marrying 