“The typewriter’s come, Jordan tells me.”
“Yes; it’s come. I’m writing out his speech. But the minute I’ve made a clean sheet, he alters it all and messes it about. It’s getting on his nerves, I believe, and I’ll swear it’s getting on mine. I don’t hear anything else, morning, noon, and night.”
“It’s distracting his mind.”
“Yes; he can’t think of more than one thing at a time, Jordan can’t. I’m just a machine now, like the typewriter. I told him yesterday I didn’t hold with some of his opinions about labour, and he couldn’t have been more surprised if the typewriter had spoken to him.”
“I shouldn’t argue about his views if I was you, Medora. They’re his life, in a manner of speaking.”
“I shall argue about ’em if I choose. He’d think no better of me if I humbly said ditto to all he says. He goes a lot too far, and he’d take the shirts off the backs of the rich, if he could. He reads it over and over, and I very near stamp sometimes. Nothing will ever make me a socialist now. I dare say I might have been if he’d gone about it different; but now now. And, anyway, I’m not going to be the echo to Jordan, just because he takes it for granted I must be.”
“He’s found a house, he tells me.”
“He has, but he wants to beat down the rent a bit. He’s afraid of his life that Dingle’s going to have his savings out of him.”
“That’s as may be. I dare say he’ll do no such thing. It wouldn’t be like Ned.”
“Life’s properly dreadful for me—that’s all I know about it.”