"They do, do they?" James Mitchell pounced upon Anne's remark like a small and hungry terrier on a bone. "They do? Well, it would take more than any argument you, or anybody else your age, could put up, to show me."
"I don't doubt that," Anne shot at him, still busy with her dessert; "nothing would convince you because you don't want to see, or else you really can't understand."
"I can't understand, can't I? Oh, no, I suppose nobody can understand anything these days when they're past twenty-five. I've been out bucking the world for more years than you've lived in it, but of course I've had my eyes shut all the time. Now see here, let me tell you this, young lady," he leaned toward Anne and thumped the table, "you've got what this whole country's got—a dose of blind staggers. You can't see what's coming and you won't till it's hit you. You go ranting along about people needing hard sauce and luxuries and you kick like steers when the prices go up. Of course they'll go up. Why shouldn't they? It's the law of supply and demand. When dairymen find out people 'have to have hard sauce' they're going to run up butter and eggs. A fool can see that."
"Only a fool can see that," Anne's voice shook in spite of herself. "Why shouldn't people have hard sauce?"
"Don't you get off any of that Socialistic jargon in this house. I won't have it. If I'd had any say in the bringing up of you girls——"
"Now, papa, please. The girls——"
"If you'd had anything to say, Belle would never have been a trained nurse, nor I a special stenographer. We'd both have been wrapping packages in some department store basement." Anne rolled her napkin and rose in an icy quiet.
"A lot of good either Belle's nursing or your stenography does," he darted now down the personal opening Anne had made him. "We never see Belle except when she has a few moments she doesn't know what to do with, and she wouldn't help out with a dollar if she was asked. And as for you—where could you get the board your mother puts up for what you pay?"
"Now, papa! Anne——"
"Well, I've quit my job, so you'll have to board me for nothing until I get another one."