1WHEN he saw the money I said, “It’s not my money, it doesn’t belong to me.”

2“Whose is it, then?”

3“It’s Cora Tull’s money. It’s Mrs. Tull’s. I sold the cakes for it.”

4“Ten dollars for two cakes?”

5“Don’t you touch it. It’s not mine.”

6“You never had them cakes. It’s a lie. It was them Sunday clothes you had in that package.”

7“Don’t you touch it! If you take it you are a thief.”

8“My own daughter accuses me of being a thief. My own daughter.”

9“Pa. Pa.”

10“I have fed you and sheltered you. I give you love and care, yet my own daughter, the daughter of my dead wife, calls me a thief over her mother’s grave.”

11“It’s not mine, I tell you. If it was, God knows you could have it.”

12“Where did you get ten dollars?”

13“Pa. Pa.”

14“You won’t tell me. Did you come by it so shameful you dare not?”

15“It’s not mine, I tell you. Can’t you understand it’s not mine?”

16“It’s not like I wouldn’t pay it back. But she calls her own father a thief.”

17“I can’t, I tell you. I tell you it’s not my money. God knows you could have it.”

18“I wouldn’t take it. My own born daughter that has et my food for seventeen years, begrudges me the loan of ten dollars.”

19“It’s not mine. I can’t.”

20“Whose is it, then?”

21“It was give to me. To buy something with.”

22“To buy what with?”

23“Pa. Pa.”

24“It’s just a loan. God knows, I hate for my blooden children to reproach me. But I give them what was mine without stint. Cheerful I give them, without stint. And now they deny me. Addie. It was lucky for you you died, Addie.”

25“Pa. Pa.”

26“God knows it is.”

27He took the money and went out.