"Because my mother threatens to put me out of her house."
"But what for?" he said, looking at her in amazement.
"I don't look like an incorrigible, do I?" she said smiling. "But my mother thinks me one for associating with people like you."
"With people like me?"
"Well, like you and the other model tenementers."
"But I'm not like them," he said, half amused, half annoyed.
"No? Do you know what I've noticed? All the people in the model tenements say they are 'not like them.' Cornelia says so, Robert says so, and now you say so. Each one thinks he is different, unique."
"Well, I'm sure that you are," he said, rather seriously. He added, lightly. "That's why it would be fatal if you went to live there. Do try to patch it up with your mother, Janet, and give up this plan of Cornelia's."
"Patching it up with my mother means complete submission. Her motto is, 'bend or break.' And I've bent long enough."
She tried briefly to give him an idea of her mother's domestic tyranny and of her own rebellion against it.