“It might be one thing and it might be another,” observed Mrs. Brewster cryptically. “A girl trying to look like a boy would only amuse some men, but it might lead you into excessively disagreeable experiences with others. To say nothing of—well——”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I fancy you have seen too much of one side of life and very little of another. If you’ll take my advice you will go up to New York—I’d love to go with you!—and buy a lot of feminine frocks and hats. Of course you are in mourning but there are adorable black things.”
“I hate feminine frocks. Besides, if I’m good-looking I never would be able to keep men off.”
“You never will, anyway, but you might have a—well, more satisfactory measure of success if you cast yourself for the part of the cold and indifferent beauty. That’s rather out of date, but as men today are averse from effort of any sort in their relations with women, accustomed to be met half-way, in short, I fancy you’d be able to manage. But do you really never intend to marry?”
“I really do not! If you knew what I know of men your books wouldn’t be fit for publication. What sort of stories do you write, anyway? Realistic or romantic? Are those the terms?”
Once more Gita had eluded her, but she replied with every appearance of eager response: “Terms are out of date but principle remains the same. I write both. When I’m sad and tired I write romance, and when I’m feeling particularly buoyant, I write small-town stuff, with husbands going about the bedrooms in suspenders and forgetting to brush their teeth; and revolting wives (both ways) scraping out the kitchen sink. I always give particular prominence to grease. When the sink is clean, if it ever is, she turns her attention to the fly-specks and marks of heads on the wall-paper.”
Gita’s eyebrows were in their proper place and she was grinning delightedly. “I think you’re a whacker!” she exclaimed. “Do you ever write of New York? That is the one city I long to see—I’ve barely had a glimpse of it. I’m going up to all the theaters and concerts and just walk the streets. Will you come along? I’d love to have you.”
Mrs. Brewster’s eyes glowed, but she answered firmly: “I don’t know anything I’d like better, but I simply won’t walk the streets with you if you insist upon wearing those clothes—and that hat. In the first place it’s a crime and in the second I dislike being conspicuous.”
Gita looked sulkily at her plate. “I’ve dressed like this since I was sixteen. My mother didn’t like it, and she was the only person I cared enough about to mind whether anyone liked it or not. But I’m used to it. I should feel awkward and intolerably strange any other way.”