"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I can't! I--wouldn't!" She was fumbling now for a handkerchief against tears that were imminent. "Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the border, and--" "Oh, I know. I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest." "It's hand-woven, Selene, with--" "I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice crowded with passion and tears rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!" "Selene, Selene, mamma ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars if it cost a cent. Her table-napkins alone they say cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, unmonogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars if it costs a cent. Selene, mamma will make for you every sacrifice she can afford, but she ain't got the money." "You--have got the money!" "So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet, it is a pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do for you. A child like you that's been indulged, that I ain't even asked ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl ever had. But I ain't got the money--I ain't got the money." "You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two." "Why Selene--that's gramaw's--to go back--" "You mean the bank-book's hers?" "That's gramaw's to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take gramaw and her wreaths back home on." "There you go--talking loony." "Selene!" "Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along like that." "You--" "All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first before me, with all my life to live--all right!" "Your poor old--"