They were perfectly calm with her—cool, affectionate, sensible, and worldly, as it is right and proper for parents to be. She told them they were wrong-headed, old-fashioned, and unintelligent; but as long as they hadn't made scenes and talked loud she found that she couldn't help loving them almost as much as she always had; but she loved G. G. very much more. And having definitely decided to defy her family, to marry G. G. and live happily ever afterward, she consulted her check-book and discovered that her available munition of war was something less than five hundred dollars—most of it owed to her dress-maker.
"Well, well!" she said; "she's always had plenty of money from me; she can afford to wait."
And Cynthia wrote to her dress-maker, who was also her friend!
My dear Celeste: I have decided that you will have to afford to wait for your money. I have an enterprise in view which calls for all the available capital I have. Please write me a nice note and say that you don't mind a bit. Otherwise we shall stop being friends and I shall always get my clothes from somebody else. Let me know when the new models come....
V
On her way down-town Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the whole household in the throes occasioned by its head's pneumonia.
"Why haven't you let me know?" exclaimed Cynthia. "There must be so many little things that I could have done to help you."
Though the sick man couldn't have heard them if they had shouted, the two women talked in whispers, with their heads very close together.