“You’re a brute, my dear Diddums, and more casually cruel than a Baffin-land cannibal,” I retorted. “But we’ll let it pass. For I’m talking about something that’s too fundamental to be upset by a bitter tongue. There was a time, I know, when I used to fret about the finer things I thought I was losing out of life, about the little hand-made fripperies people have been forced to conjure up and carpenter together to console them for having to live in human beehives made of steel and concrete. But I’m beginning to find out that joy isn’t a matter of geography and companionship isn’t a matter of over-crowded subways. And the strap-hangers and the train-catchers and the first-nighters can have what they’ve got. I don’t seem to envy them the way I used to. I don’t need a Louvre when I’ve got the Northern Lights to look at. And I can get along without an Æolian Hall when I’ve got a little music in my own heart—for it’s only what you’ve got there, after all, that really counts in this world!”
“All of which means,” concluded my husband, “that you are most unmistakably growing old!” 48
“You have already,” I retorted, “referred to me as a withered beauty.”
Dinky-Dunk studied me long and intently. I even felt myself turning pink under that prolonged stare of appraisal.
“You are still easy to look at,” he over-slangily and over-generously admitted. “But I do regret that you aren’t a little easier to live with!”
I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn’t quite keep a tremor out of my voice when I spoke again.
“I’m sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. But it’s kindness that seems to bring everything that is best out of us women. We’re terribly like sliced pineapple in that respect: give us just a sprinkling of sugar, and out come all the juices!”
It was Dinky-Dunk’s color that deepened a little as he turned and knocked out his pipe.
“That’s a Chaddie McKail argument,” he merely observed as he stood up. “And a Chaddie McKail argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swiss cheese: it doesn’t seem to be genuine unless you can find plenty of holes in it.”