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Show m Thomas and Barbara was intensifying. "He can!" "It would destroy him to compromise those things in which he believes," Thomas appealed to her feelings for her father. "What about us? Don't we mean anything to father?" "Barbara!" Jane was now reproving her for voicing the unthinkable. "If he loved us, he would come home!" "That sounds right to me," Benjamen sided with Bar bara. Barbara turned to Benjamen and Joseph, "Father doesn't care that we hardly have food to eat or clothes to wear." "He doesn't know," Thomas enlightened them all. "He doesn't know?" Barbara's frenzy was real. "Then tell him!" "No! It would be more than he could bear." "Thomas,..look at us!" The threadbare clothes told the story. Barbara ran to the larder and threw open the cupboard doors, one after the other, revealing almost empty shelves. "Look!" she demanded. "Do you think if father knew what we're suffering that he'd still refuse to say that Oath?" Thomas hesitated, not because he was uncertain of the answer, but because he didn't know how to meet the reaction of Barbara that was sure to follow. |
