Lord knows, he makes enough off me. If the tobacco price hadn't risen a bit this year, we'd probably be in the debtors' prison." Brookes gave Beall a ...mall smile to show that he was not really serious about that."Is Robert Peter still your factor down there?" Beall took out his small, tattered notebook and stub of a pencil."No, no, he's turned it over to another man, use to work for Andrew Heugh, young fellow called McKendry. Another Scot of course. Good enough for all that, keeps his accounts. I look at her still confused. "I thought you said it is bad if you didn't want it. Now it is bad even if you like the touch?" Everyone is staring at me like I am an alien. The teacher looks at me funny and I start to squirm. Mrs. D looks annoyed and says "correct, because he is not your husband." I say, "oh, ok." Because I want everyone to stop looking at me. I sat quietly thinking about last night when I went to bed and every night since I remember. My dad laying in my bed rubbing. "Mrs Beale held Dee's hand, with a choker in it, under Dee's shirt and against her ribs."Wait..."As Dee held the stone against herself, she began to feel a series of emotions.It was strange. The red stone was eliciting her maternal instinct. She had never felt the remotest attraction to any boy, or any baby, so this was unusual to her.She felt a wave of love flowing through her. As it began to carry her away, her affection was concentrated in the warm stone. It was a funny thought, but if. Was that... ? I think it was. My body had reacted in a particular way to the sounds, and though I halfheartedly tried to tell myself that it was probably just someone who had fallen asleep on their books, the changes I felt within my pants belied that theory.I became aware of my restlessness, an urge to move, uncovered by another’s private ritual. But to get up and walk around, as if nothing had happened, seemed a violation of that sanctity. (Until then, my idea of sanctity had been maintaining.