“Do you know, Gertrude,” Jimmy said, as they set foot on the glimmering beach, “you don’t seem a bit natural lately. You used to be so full of the everlasting mischief. Every time you opened your mouth I dodged for fear of being spiked. Yet here you are just as docile as other folks.” 134
“Don’t you like me—as well?” Gertrude tried her best to make her voice sound as usual.
“Better,” Jimmie swore promptly; then he added a qualifying—“I guess.”
“Don’t you know?” But she didn’t allow him the opportunity to answer. “I’m in a transition period, Jimmie,” she said. “I meant to be such a good parent to Eleanor and correct all the evil ways into which she has fallen as a result of all her other injudicious training, and, instead of that, I’m doing nothing but think of myself and my own hankerings and yearnings and such. I thought I could do so much for the child.”
“That’s the way we all think till we tackle her and then we find it quite otherwise and even more so. Tell me about your hankerings and yearnings.”
“Tell me about your job, Jimmie.”
And for a little while they found themselves on safe and familiar ground again. Jimmie’s new position was a very satisfactory one. He found himself associated with men of solidity and discernment, and for the first time in his business career he felt himself appreciated and stimulated by that appreciation to do his not inconsiderable best. Gertrude was the one woman—Eleanor had 135 not yet attained the inches for that classification—to whom he ever talked business.
“Now, at last, I feel that I’ve got my feet on the earth, Gertrude; as if the stuff that was in me had a chance to show itself, and you don’t know what a good feeling that is after you’ve been marked trash by your family and thrown into the dust heap.”
“I’m awfully glad, Jimmie.”
“I know you are, ’Trude. You’re an awfully good pal. It isn’t everybody I’d talk to like this. Let’s sit down.”