“Soothing nothing! You’ve doused it all in my eyes, they smart like fire! Oo, ouch! Lilly, get out!”
“Well, try that mental science again. Think they don’t smart. Think you haven’t any eyes!”
“I wish I hadn’t any ears! Do stop chattering, Lilly!”
“My! Aunt Hetty sized up your state of mind all right, didn’t she? Well, Uncle, I guess I’ll read to you. Here’s a lovely story in this new magazine. Listen: ‘The pale young man fairly trembled as he looked at her. “Ethelyn,” he murmured, in sighing tones, “you are so adorably subtle, so tragically intensive, that I feel—I feel—”’”
“I refuse to know how that young nincompoop felt! Shut up that fool book, Lilly! If you must read, read me some Wall Street news.”
“All right, Uncle Abel, here goes. I’ll read from this morning’s paper: ‘Coffee declined rather sharply at the opening.’ Why, how funny! What was the opening? A sort of a reception day? And if people declined coffee, why did they do so sharply? Why not say, ‘No, thank you,’ and take tea?”
“I don’t want that column; turn to ‘Gossip of Wall Street.’”
“Yes, here that is. But, Uncle, do the magnates and things gossip? I thought that was a woman’s trick! Well, here we are: ‘Steel rail changes discussed all day!’ Oh, Uncle, and then to call women chatterboxes! When men talk all day long about a foolish little thing like changing a steel rail! Why, I can change a whole hat in less time than that! Say, Uncle, there was the dearest hat in the Featherton’s window—”
“I’ll bet it was dear if it was in that shop!”
“Well, but it had been reduced; marked down to $27.99. Such a bargain! Uncle, you know my birthday comes next week—”