"Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?" Sue demanded, in a quick challenging tone.
"Am I?" asked Eleanore placidly.
Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me.
"Why not think it over, Billy?" she urged. "You're not happy now, I never saw you so worried and blue."
"I'm not in the least!" I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me. She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way:
"Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may even learn to go slower himself—now that he has had typhoid——"
"Do you think so?" Eleanore put in.
"Why not?" cried Sue impatiently. "If he keeps on at this pace it will kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of power! Why not use it here? Suppose it is harder! Oh, I get so out of patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives! Why can't we give ourselves a little?" And she went back over all Joe had said. "It's all so real. So tremendously real," she ended.