“Certainly I did. Only that. I was polite and patient. If I hadn’t felt so disgusted and out of spirits I’d have spoken to her freely and fully. But it wasn’t worth while.”
“But they won’t stand that sort of thing. They won’t have you again.”
“I don’t intend to go again. I couldn’t endure it for five minutes. I’d rather sweep a crossing on Lexington Avenue.”
“There aren’t any crossings on Lexington Avenue, and if there were, you don’t know how to sweep. What will you say to Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Ashworth?”
She shrugged with an almost insolent indifference.
“I’ll say I don’t like it. That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Lizzie, I beg of you to be reasonable. They won’t go on helping you if you disappoint them like this.”
“Then they can stop helping me—I’m not so immensely charmed and interested in them. They try and force me into things I don’t want to do. They take it out of my hands and then come smiling at me and say it’s all arranged. So it is—to their liking but not to mine.”
“It’s your profession, the only thing you know. What else could they do?”
“Let me alone.”