"Lydia, you are a merry soul today," exclaimed Janet, amidst the general laughter.
"And why not?" inquired Lydia, with a provoking drawl. "Why not? When I see my last blood curdler running well into the two hundred thousands!"
"Lydia is right," said Pryor. "In the present state of civilization, all the best people are failures, glorious failures."
He contrasted the fortunes of Lydia's pornographic romances with the fate of her one serious experiment in fiction. The romances sold like hot cakes. But the serious work, a short novel in which, with pitiless Hogarthian realism, she had developed an episode between a brother and a sister, had been refused by her publisher on the ground that "it was too terrible!" Then there was his own case! Had he not failed as a detective because too much secret information was always breezing his way?
"Don't forget our young feminist over there," cried Lydia, indicating Janet. "Don't forget her, or her heroic gesture against wedlock!"
"A bark is not as good as a bite," retorted Janet. "But isn't it better than a tame crawl into the yoke?"
By way of reply, Lydia half raised herself from the tiger skin and, in measured tones, recited:
"O Dewdrop, thou hast fought the better fight—in vain! Some women are born to be wedlocked, some achieve wedlock, and some have wedlock thrust upon them. Janet belongs to the first group, Charlotte belongs to the second, I belong to the third."
"You to the third!" cried Charlotte. "How do you make that out? From all I see, though Charley Morrow is a perfect dragon of jealousy, you cling to him pretty tightly."
"I have to, Charlotte! I have to keep him in countenance (and in pocket money, too!), because I'm afflicted with what the doctors call 'a floating stomach.' Now, Charley is not only the best housekeeper in New York, he's the best cook, too. There's simply nobody else whom I can depend on not to sneak lard instead of butter into my bread—"