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it more and more as he continued to brood about it. Every time you tried to make excuses for people like that, he thought, they turned around and ran true to type. Theyhad no respect for other families. They considered themselves better than other people. He couldn’t quite bring himself to face the fact that it had been a disastrous move to raise the question of money, and that by doing so he had probably wrecked his daughter’s hopes of marriage. He’d never really had anything against William, only against the double sin of sexual trespass and pregnancy. But he’d been intimidated. He didn’t like the idea that somebody in his family could end up in a law court. They’d always been law-abiding – all of them.
    He told his wife that it wasn’t going to be the way they’d hoped; they couldn’t expect any help from the boy’s parents. They’d have to start thinking about those doctor and hospital bills, not to mention the embarrassment of having to go on living in the town afterwards. Jean’s mother got scared. She had never done anything underhand or shameful; she’d worked hard and made a good home for her family. And if Jean didn’t get married now, it would be her parents’ lives that would be destroyed, not hers.
    She had a little talk with her daughter. She told her that no matter how things went, Jean wasn’t to worry: it still wasn’t too late to do something about it.
    Jean pretended to be reassured. She wrote a long letter to William, asking him what was going on at his house, and telling him that her mother had changed, and wanted her to get rid of the baby. She had to talk to him, she said.
    She ran to the Sumner house, to the urn on the terrace. She left her note and hurried away with the letter she’d found addressed to her in an excellent facsimile of William’s handwriting.
    His mother saw her come and go. And she picked up the letter meant for William. If she or her husband had stopped to think, they might have said to themselves that many boys and young men will sleep with the wrong kind of girl because there’s nobody else around, but that this affair wasn’t like that: the two were in love. Traditionally, that was supposed to make all irregularities acceptable. Therefore, if the parents disapproved so violently, it might be because they actually wished to discourage the young from loving.
    William’s mother realized that she could keep up the letter game for only so long. It would be stupid to assume that one of them wouldn’t catch her at her substitution; or, they might come across her while trying – in spite of their promises, and against their parents’ wishes – to meet each other. Nor did she look forward to having her husband discover the exact extent of her interference. She could justify her actions if she had to: a mother has excuses not available to other people. But she’d rather not have to. All she had said in the beginning was that she was going to read the letters, in order to figure out the right way to approach William: as long as she was free to act on her own, everything would be fine. Of course, if her husband wanted to read their letters himself … No, he’d said; he didn’t think it was necessary to read anyone’s letters, but he’d leave the matter to her.
    She was excited, frightened, and should have been worried about her rapid heartbeat. The thrill of participating in William’s drama, of saving her son from making a mess of his life, kept her at fever-pitch. She was happy. She’d never had a real romance herself: the secret, stealthy, illicit going back and back again to temptation. She was having her romance now, fired by the heroic part she was playing – a woman rescuing her innocent son from ruin. She didn’t blame the girl especially; it was just that a girl like Jean wasn’t good enough. Girls like that wanted to get married. It didn’t usually matter who was picked out to marry them. Jean would have to release her hold on William and