about the kind of a home she run for me and I working
as hard as cider to keep it and now she left snakes around, Gawd knows
where, and how would a artist like myself get the rest to do justice to
my work on the bomb-explosion scene in the last reel of "Bosh or
Bolshevik?" which I was going to be shot in only the next day, and if
she had to support me instead of I her, she would have a right to leave
any animals or minerals around she chose, but this was my flat and
although Gawd knew she was welcome, pretty soon we would have none if I
was to be made a nervous wreck out of instead of the biggest nerve in
pictures. Yes, I said that and a lot more pretty mean stuff as only a
daughter can--for even with my refinement I am but a mere human after
all, and under the glittering success of my career is several common
human failings and at times I act no different from any less well-known
female in the bosom of my family.

So I had the last word and Ma was in wrong and went to get lunch without
a come-back out of her. Alas! Had I but canned that foolish chatter of
mine! But how could I know she was going to act like she done later
because of it? You can't remember forwards and if a person could, it's
ten to one they'd quit before they was off the bottle and go back to
Heaven whence they come, life being so full of mistakes you could of
avoided if only you had done something different from what you did!

II

Well, anyways, Ma went back to the kitchen to fix up a little snack of
waffles and honey and poached eggs on hash and cream-cake and
strawberries with a cup of cocoa and whipped cream for a light lunch,
her lunches being light about the way a "light" motor truck is, and I
went back to my joint contract and was so mad I concluded to write into
it not alone expenses and Rosco but a cottage or bungaloo, as it is
called in Los Angeles, while out there. With which I wrote a refined but
firm letter to Goldringer, saying this was my final word on the matter
and spoke also for Jim. Then I enclosed the contract and Ma called out
the cocoa was getting cold and so I stamped and put it in the hall-slot
which I never have a feeling any letter going down it is headed for
anybody except maybe the devil, and not even him unless it don't get
stuck on the way. And then I ate, though not with much appetite, what
with expecting any moment to see Maude crawl out from some place, and Ma
being quiet to a extent not to be fully accounted for by