“I put it to mother how you would feel taking care of a child all day. They had me all planned for a dotted Swiss, pink sash, and a floppy leghorn—ugh! and my hair down like Alice in Wonderland’s!... So, I stormed and used you for argument. Quoted you, too—things you would have said, if—if you had said ’em. I pictured the thing; made them see us walking hand-in-hand, before all that Main-line crowd, Father Rollo and daughter Rollo—me lost in that leghorn! Well, they compromised on this.”
“You did it mighty quick,” he remarked thoughtfully. His eye took in the satisfying effect of the close-fitting silk “basque,” with its soft, flaring sleeves drooping in mysterious folds from the shoulders, and the oldish dark hat with its snug cluster of blood-red roses.
“One whole month,” she told him. “The dressmaker comes only on Mondays, you know.”
“A month?” He was puzzled. “You didn’t know I was coming with you a month ago?”
“Oh, yes, I did, mon capitaine,” she chuckled. “You were all planned, too.”
“Bless my soul!” he ejaculated.
“Topic number two,” she announced, “is Holden. Of course, you are going to take that professorship?”
“No!” he spoke sharply. “I can’t possibly do it—The fact is—well, I’ll tell you—Diccon got it for me. He’s a member of the trustees. I didn’t know that. He just pulled for me—awfully fine of him; but he used the bludgeon of newspaper power and every trick he could lay hold of. There was an immense competition—I didn’t know that, either—and he won out by a big majority, against the President’s candidate, too. I wormed it out of him. He says it’s all right—says that’s the way it’s done.... Says he’ll make me President next.... Gross!... And I thought they had read my little studies—Pooh! There’s something humiliating in that sort of thing—even if it is customary. I told Diccon I couldn’t take it.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He said, ‘Think it over.’ I have thought it over. It’s no use.”