“Are you?”
“Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it’s wrong. Hear me talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But it’s so. I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this morning with Hat saying I spent too much money.”
“Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!”
“‘What’s the good of having it,’ I said, ‘if I can’t spend it?’
“‘You’d buy anything,’ she said, ‘that anybody wanted you to buy, if it was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn’t generosity,’ she said; ‘it’s just weakness.’
“‘Oh, suck an orange!’ I said, ‘Chew gum! It’s anything 146you choose to call it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I’m going right on to buy it. And if it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his children more garlic,’ I said, ‘that’s not going to stop me,’ I said. I don’t mind showing you”–she dropped her selections from the morning’s dialogue–“the thing I bought which started our little discussion. The artist who made it brought it himself to show me.”
She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it before him, examining it at the same time as he did.
“Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?”
“H-m, I’m not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?”
“Right you are! Of course that’s what it is. It’s a picture of the queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that’s not all. If you should take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of writing–fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don’t you think I was right to buy it?”