THE CHILD IS THE MEANING
353
"Mother, in a technical sense I am absolutely innocent," said'
Nancy to her mother, smiling about the innocence she meant, which
was the preservation of her virginity. "Nowadays if you don't pet, the
boys drop you."
Sarah remained perplexed, although appeased. The resentment
she felt when Nancy went out with a young man in a car was so
great that only by preventing Nancy from going out at all could
she have freed herself of this feeling. Since every effort to keep Nancy
at home in the evening merely made her disappear during the after–
noon, or return late from school, Sarah accepted her own harsh re–
sentment. And she blamed her husband, she said that Nancy was just
like her father, and she supposed that the love which existed between
Nancy and her father was ba<>ed on the fact that both were so much
interested in the act of making love.
Rebecca tried to explain to her sister that anyone could see
that Nancy was the kind of a girl who would not get into trouble,
she was adequate to every situation, she just wanted to have a good
time like everyone else. But the mere fact that it was Rebecca's
explanation sufficed to prevent it from being plausible to Sarah,
even if it had not been insufficient for other reasons.
"If
you had a daughter," said Sarah, "you would feel like I do."
Rebecca's boy, John, was growing up too and Sarah pointed out
to her sister that she was spoiling him in the way that she had tried
to spoil Sarah's children when she was an unmarried aunt.
"He is not in good health," said Rebecca who was very sensitive
about John, "you have to be careful with an ailing child. You know
that he has convulsions."
Meanwhile Seymour's relationship with John was exactly what
it had been to Nancy and Jasper when they were still children, and
although John did not respond to Seymour's teasing as fully as the
sensitive Jasper had, still it was a comfort to Seymour to have a
child to tell jokes to, to send on errands, to make fun of, and to
teach about major league baseball. As Jasper went forward in high
school, he began to read books of which Seymour did not approve.
For a time uncle and nephew had had a common interest ip 0. Henry
and Irvin S. Cobb, but when Jasper began at fifteen to read the
fiction of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Seymour was troubled.
"God knows what is going to become of that boy," said Seymour,
"if
he reads any more, he will turn out to be some kind of' freak."
On the other hand, Seymour took pride in Jasper's precocity,
and bragged to his friends about his nephew's learning, exaggerating
