Booth Tarkington

“ You’ve always done it—always—ever since you were a little boy! Whenever anything goes wrong with you, you take it out on me! You do! You always——”
George flung to heaven a gesture of despair; it seemed to him the last straw that Fanny should have chosen this particular time to come and sob in his room over his mistreatment of her! ”

“ George said harshly. “When I spoke to my Uncle George after that rotten thing I heard Aunt Amelia say about my mother, he said if there was any gossip it was about you! He said people might be laughing about the way you ran after Morgan, but that was all.”
Fanny lifted her hands, clenched them, and struck them upon her knees. “Yes; it’s always Fanny!” she sobbed. “Ridiculous old Fanny—always, always!”
“You listen!” George said. “After I’d talked to Uncle George I saw you; and you said I had a mean little mind for thinking there might be truth in what Aunt Amelia said about people talking. ”

“ Everybody knows it; and she broke it off on account of that serenade when Eugene didn’t know what he was doing. He drank when he was a young man, and she wouldn’t stand it, but everybody in this town knows that Isabel has never really cared for any other man in her life! Poor Wilbur! He was the only soul alive that didn’t know it!”
Nightmare had descended upon the unfortunate George; he leaned back against the foot-board of his bed, gazing wildly at his aunt. “I believe I’m going crazy,” he said. “You mean when you told me there wasn’t any talk, you told me a falsehood?”
“No!” Fanny gasped. ”