Dirk grinned. “Gosh!”
“I remember enough of my French at Miss Fister’s school to know that that means gilded youth.”
“Me! That’s good! I’m not even spangled.”
“Dirk!” her voice was low, vibrant. “Dirk, I don’t want you to be a gilded youth, I don’t care how thick the gilding. Dirk, that isn’t what I worked in the sun and cold for. I’m not reproaching you; I didn’t mind the work. Forgive me for even mentioning it. But, Dirk, I don’t want my son to be known as one of the jeunesse dorée. No! Not my son!”
“Now, listen, Mother. That’s foolish. If you’re going to talk like that. Like a mother in a melodrama whose son’s gone wrong. . . . I work like a dog. You know that. You get the wrong angle on things, stuck out here on this little farm. Why don’t you come into town and take a little place and sell the farm?”
“Live with you, you mean?” Pure mischievousness.
“Oh, no. You wouldn’t like that,” hastily. “Besides, I’d never be there. At the office all day, and out somewhere in the evening.”
“When do you do your reading, Dirk?”
“Why—uh——”
She sat up in bed, looking down at the thin end of her braid as she twined it round and round her finger. “Dirk, what is this you sell in that mahogany office of yours? I never did get the hang of it.”