“You don’t seem to take matrimony into consideration.”
“Oh, I don’t deny I get so tired sometimes that I’d be only too glad to have a man take care of me. I guess we all look forward to that, more or less. I think I’d always work, but not so hard. It would make all the difference in the world if you knew some one else was paying the bills. And then, you see, we go to pieces in eight or ten years. A man is good for hard newspaper work until he’s forty, but we women are made to be taken care of, and that’s a fact. We take turns having nervous prostration. I haven’t had it yet, but I’m looking cheerfully forward to it.”
“Now I want to tell you,” said Patience, “that I am going to be a newspaper woman.”
“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Peele! Excuse me, but you belong here. Your rôle is that of the châtelaine in exquisite French gowns and an air half of languor, half of pride. You were not made for work.”
“That is very pretty, but I suspect you don’t want to lose me for copy.”
“Well, I don’t deny it. I wish you’d keep the ball rolling, and give me a story a month.”
“I’m afraid I’ve given you my last. In a week or two I shall be a châtelaine in a pink and grey gown no longer, but a humble applicant for work in Mr. Field’s office.”
“Is it possible that you mean it?”
“Do I look as if I were joking?”
“You don’t look unhappy—Pardon me—but—but—does he beat you?”