"Bear in mind that he's a bad, bad (though personally not displeasing) old man, ridden by ruinous ideas about the almightiness of the dollar, or lucre as we term it.... I have observed for some time that he desires to corrupt me with his Persian luxuries."
"Persian! Well, I never!"
Mrs. G., a stout woman and a dress-reformer by the look of her, got hot corn muffins from the kitchenette in the corner, and added:
"Them rugs is beautiful."
"He said lux'ries, mommer, like lowneg dresses, and tchampagne, and ice-cream all like animals," said Kern.
"I do declare! Well, they do say the mawls of some of them swells is something nawful. Not alloodin' to your uncle now, well, of course, sir."
"I know a girl named Sadie Whirtle," continued Kern, "and there was a man named Toatwood made a lot of money, corntracting, and his wife she took some of the money and went to Europe in a steamer and stayed more'n two months buying clo'es. And one day Sadie Whirtle goes up to him and says, 'Mist' Toatwood, hear your wife's come home with some fine Parisian clo'es.' And Mist' Toatwood says, 'Shucks'--on'y he says somep'n worse'n shucks--'Shucks,' says he, 'why, my wife never been to Persia in her life.'"
Kern was eighteen, with six years of bread-winning behind her, but she told her story exactly in the manner of a child of eight. That is to say, she told it in a monotone without evincing, and clearly without feeling, the slightest amusement in it, and at the end, continuing quite grave, watched for its effect on others with a curious, staring interest. Her immobile, investigatory expression made the doctor laugh, which seemed, of late, to be the object in life of all Kern's anecdotes.
"Where'd you get that story, Corinne?"
His odd habit of so calling her had often been privately discussed between Kern and her mother, who had so long ago shortened their own original Kurrin that even that had passed from memory. They had concluded that this was only one of his jokey gempman's ways.