“It’s all over, isn’t it? All over, and we’re doing the shouting. No more wild men of Borneo, no more dishes to wash, no more Orpheum. Remember what Aunt Mirabelle said a year ago? She was dead right. Look! See the writing on the wall, baby?”
He swung her towards the door! she brushed away her tears, and beheld the writing. It was in large red letters, and what it said was very brief and very appropriate. It said: EXIT.
CHAPTER XVII
In the living-room of an unfashionable house on an unfashionable street, Mrs. Theodore Mix sat in stately importance at her desk, composing a vitriolic message to the unsympathetic world. As her husband entered, she glanced up at him with chronic disapproval; she was on the point of giving voice to it, not for any specific reason but on general principles, but Mr. Mix had learned something from experience, so his get-away was almost simultaneous with his entrance.
“Mail!” said Mr. Mix, and on the wing, he dropped it on his wife’s desk, and went on out of the room.
The mail consisted of one letter; it contained the check which Henry sent her regularly, on the first of each month.
She sat back for a moment, and stared out at the unfashionable street. Mr. Mix was always urging her to live in a better neighbourhood, 301 but with only her own two hundred and fifty a month, and four hundred more from Henry, she could hardly afford it,––certainly not while she gave so generously to the Reform League.
She thought of the big brick house on the hill and sighed profoundly. She would have made it a national shrine, and Henry––Henry was even worse than his uncle. He kept it full of people who were satisfied to squander the precious stuff of life by enjoying themselves. It made her sick, simply to think of Henry. People said he and Bob Standish were the two cleverest men that ever lived in town. Doubled the Starkweather business in two years. Directors of banks. Directors of the Associated Charities and trustees of the City Hospital. Humph! As if she didn’t know Henry’s capabilities. Just flippancy and monkey-tricks. And married to a girl who was a walking advertisement of exactly what every right-minded woman should revolt against. That girl to be the mother of children! Oh Lord, oh Lord, if Anna were a modern specimen, what would the next generation be?