Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

It was a will; Eula of course told Lawyer. Flem hisself could a suh-jested the idea to Linda; it wouldn’t a been difficult. Which I don’t believe neither. He didn’t need to; he knowed her well enough to presume on that, jest like she knowed him enough to presume too. It was Linda herself that evolved the idea when she realised that as long as he lived and drawed breath as Flem Snopes, he wasn’t never going to give her permission to leave Jefferson for any reason. And her asking herself, impotent and desperate: But why? why? until finally she answered it—a answer that maybe wouldn’t a helt much water but she was jest sixteen and seventeen then, during which sixteen and seventeen years she had found out that the only thing he loved was money. Because she must a knowed something anyway about Manfred de Spain. Jefferson wasn’t that big, if in fact any place is. Not to mention them two or three weeks of summer holiday at the seashore or mountains or wherever, when here all of a sudden who should turn up but a old Jefferson neighbor happening by accident to take his vacation too from the bank at the same time and place. So what else would she say? It’s grandfather’s money, that his one and only chance to keep any holt on it is through mama and me so he believes that once I get away from him his holt on both of us will be broken and mama will leave too and marry Manfred and any hope of grandfather’s money will be gone forever.

Yet here was this man that had had sixteen or seventeen years to learn her he didn’t love nothing but money and would do anything you could suh-jest to get another dollar of it, coming to her hisself, without no pressure from nobody and not asking for nothing back, saying, You can go away to school if you still want to; only, this first time anyhow stay at least as close to home as Oxford; saying in effect: I was wrong. I wont no longer stand between you and your life, even though I am convinced I will be throwing away all hope of your grandpaw’s money.

So what else could she do but what she done, saying in effect back at him: If you jest realised now that grandfather’s money aint as important as my life, I could a told you that all the time; if you had jest told me two years ago that all you was was jest skeered, I would a eased you then—going (Lawyer hisself told me this) to a Oxford lawyer as soon as she was settled in the University and drawing up a will leaving whatever share she might ever have in her grandpaw’s or her maw’s estate to her father Flem Snopes. Sho, that wouldn’t a held no water neither but she was jest eighteen and that was all she had to give that she thought anybody wanted or needed from her; and besides, all the water it would need to hold would be what old Will Varner would sweat out when Flem showed it to him.