...
"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he
hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks),
he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only
have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off
when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after
marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a
visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys
a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married.
But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he
had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her
share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her
share of the Ballinger estate--not very much."
VII
"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?"
"Mother did everything a good woman could do."
"Maybe she was too good."
"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good."
"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has
different tastes."
"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower
herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father."
"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why didn't
mother get a divorce?"
"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been
divorced.
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