"Permanently. Mother and you are buried alive here. You ought to come to New York to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little apartment, a furnished apartment at first, to see how you like it—two rooms and kitchenette, like a playhouse."
Hosey Brewster looked down at his own big bulk, then around the great furnace room. "Oh, but listen—"
"No, I want you to listen first. Mother's worn out, I tell you. It isn't as if she were the old-fashioned kind; she isn't. She loves the theatres, and pretty hats, and shoes with buckles, and lobster, and concerts."
He broke in again: "Sure; she likes 'em for a change. But for a steady diet—Besides, I've got a business to 'tend to. My gosh! I've got a business to—"
"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole thing—or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it wants its way.
He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she hated it. I asked about the attic—the cleaning and all—and she said she hated it."
"Did she say that, Paula?"
"Yes."
He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to himself, and thinking, thinking.
Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs, through the first-floor rooms, and up to the second floor. Her mother's bedroom door was open.