Well, you see, don’t you?… It just goes to show you, doesn’t it?… I knew it all the time…. It just goes to show that we’re all the same beneath the skin…. We’re all alike…. We all like the stuff… with all his book education and going off to Harvard, he’s no different from Papa, when you come down to it,” she concluded with a note of sombre brooding satisfaction in her voice.
“Wy-wy-wy—” he could see Luke teetering nervously from one huge flat foot to another, thrusting his huge hand distractedly through his flashing hair as he attempted to stammer out an earnest and excited defence and justification for his disgrace:
“Wy-wy-wy I don’t believe that Gene was drunk at all!” he stammered. “Wy I fink wy—that he j-j-j-just had the bad luck to wy to f-f-f-fall in with that gang when they were drinking and and and—wy I f’ink those wy those B-B-B-B-Blackstone bastards just saw a chance wy of collecting a wy a little graft and and and wy j-j-just made Gene the goat. Wy f-f-f-frankly I don’t believe he was drunk at all…. Wy I doubt it very much,” he said, thrusting his fingers through his hair. “F-f-f-frankly, I do.”
“I was drunk!” the boy muttered sullenly and miserably. “Drunker than any of them…. I was the worst of the lot.”
“You see, don’t you?” his sister said again to her mother in a weary, kindly, yet triumphant tone. “You see what happens, don’t you?… I’ve known it…. I’ve known it all the time,” she said with sombre satisfaction. “… No, sir,” she shook her head with a movement of emphatic conviction, as if someone had disputed her argument, “you can’t change them!… You can’t change the leopard’s spots…. Murder will out…. You can’t tell me!” she cried again, shaking her head in a movement of denial. “Blood is thicker than water. But you see, don’t you?” she said again with this curiously kindly yet triumphant satisfaction; and then added illogically: “This is what comes of going to Harvard.”
And his mother, who had been following this broken and almost incoherent discourse of his brother and sister with the quick, startled darting and attentive glances of an animal or a bird, now said nothing. Instead she just stood looking at him, her broad worn hands held at the waist for a moment in a loose strong clasp, her face white and stern, and her mouth pursed in a strong pucker of reproach. For a moment it seemed that she would speak, but suddenly her worn brown eyes were hot with tears, she shook her head at him in a strong, convulsive and almost imperceptible
