"Why, I've read some poems by a Sophy Taliaferro," she exclaimed. "Red-hot stuff they were, too!"
"Linda! I forbid you to speak in that way," said her mother.
"All right, Mater—but they were red-h—.... All right, I won't then. But, Aunt Grace, it couldn't be that Sophy Taliaferro—she must be a hundred!"
"No—only thirty," said Mrs. Loring, smiling again.
"My Gawd!" cried Belinda, pronouncing the sacred name grotesquely so as to take off the edge of her irreverence. She dropped back upon the steps, and sat staring open-mouthed at her aunt. "He's gone nutty!" she added, closing her lips with a snap. Then she sprang up again and stamped her foot.
"You've got to save him!" she cried, tears of rage in her eyes. "It isn't fair!— She's roped him in!— Morry is just at the age to do such rotten foolishness!— Thank God, this is a Land of Divorce!——"
"Belinda!"
"Yes—thank God for it!— And I wish trial marriage was here, too!"
"Belinda!"
"Oh, stuff, Mater! Haven't you read Ellen Key—she'd make you sit up!"