"I'm sure it's a mistake to be sarcastic," Mary admitted. "I'm sorry, Mary. You know I find it quite difficult to call you Mary, because it's my own name. I really came this afternoon to try to effect a reconciliation. I'm anxious to be friends. It's useless to live in the past. We should all be miserable if we did that, for we all of us make mistakes. It struck me that it might be difficult for you and Geoffrey suddenly to re-enter the family circle--a very small circle nowadays. Only myself and Muriel. So, I didn't suggest that you and he should come and live at Woodworth Lodge or anything like that. But what I thought was that perhaps you might be glad to let me assume the responsibility for that little girl in the cot. If she was allowed to live with me, you would of course be coming to see her often, and then gradually we should get to know one another, and this gulf between us might be bridged." "Never!" cried the mother. "I wouldn't let you have my Molly for nothing. Not if she was going to die the next minute. I'd sooner for her to die than have her go to you. I suppose you think I'm not fit to look after my own little gurl? Well, you've made a mistake, let me tell you. I'm as fit to look after her as what you are. She's mine. She's not yours. She never shall be yours, not while I'm alive anyway. I suppose you think I ought to be so proud because I've married a gentleman that I ought to sit still for the rest of my life with my hands crossed on my lap and do nothing. Only be proud. But I didn't marry Geoff because he was a gentleman. I married him because I loved him. I suppose you think a woman like me can't love? I suppose you think it's only ladies who can love? But that's just where you're wrong. I've loved him so much that I've been angry with myself for being so soft and carried on at him something cruel. You wouldn't have done that, would you? But I've nagged at him until he's been fit to jump into the lake, which is near where we were living at Hopkinsville. Only it isn't like a lake. More like a sea really. I suppose you think that I wouldn't dare to be jealous, just because I'd married a gentleman? I suppose you think I ought to have let him do just what he wanted? Not me. Why, he couldn't be half an hour late without I was ready to tear his eyes out to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing. I reckon sometimes he wished he'd never set eyes on me. But I loved him all the time. You needn't make no mistake about that. I've wished sometimes he'd beat me, but he never raised his hand to me. Not once. Though I've nagged him enough to make any man hit me, even though he might have been a gentleman. And then last year, when I'd given up all hopes of such things, my little Molly came along, and since she came I've been better with Geoff. I seemed to feel he belonged to me at last, because the kid's half him and half me, as I figure it out. And now you come along and want to carry off my Molly. Never. That's my last word.