“I know,” said Teddy.
“You? You never bothered your head about anything,” she said resentfully. “Money or anything. I used to be so jealous that I could have choked you sometimes.”
“What do you know about it? I did too worry. I didn’t say anything about it, that’s all.”
Blake listened carefully to this strange talk, and now he felt impelled to break in.
“I don’t understand either of you. Why should you have worried about anything? You’re grown up. If I ever get to be twenty-one, there won’t be another thing in my life that I can’t manage. Just to think that no one will be able to tell me what to do, after that! You don’t know when you’re well off.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gin pushed a charred log farther into the fire. “Well, wait until you get there and you’ll see how easy it is.”
“People waste too much time. Always talking about little things that don’t make any difference anyway, and fussing around with people they don’t like very much. They ought to stop doing what they don’t want to do, if it doesn’t make any difference to anyone. They ought to go and do what they really want.”
“What do you want to do?” asked Gin. “What things really do matter? You act as if there were something else to do.”
“I don’t know. It depends on who you are. Teddy really wants to paint; it really matters to him. What do you really want to do?”
“I don’t know. I want to have a good time in Mexico, that’s all, and it looks as if I’ll get it.” She patted Blake’s hand and smiled at him.