“You don’t look it; you’re half the size you were.”
“Oh, no, Alfred! There’s still plenty of me.”
“You are much smaller, and since you have taken to wearing black and indefinable gray gowns, you seem to be wasting away to nothing. When is it going to stop?”
“When he is satisfied that I am just the right weight. I am much stronger, Alfred; I can walk miles!”
“Can you? Well, I don’t know that it is necessary for you to walk miles; you can afford to take a cab whenever you want one.”
“Yes, dear, but I am much better.”
“I know you say so, and you’ve been awfully plucky about your diet and so on, but when is it going to end? I don’t want a wife like a thread paper.”
Julia had come into the room while he was speaking. “Dear daddy,” she said, “you’re very dense. Mother’s getting vain in her old age. She’s got a French milliner, she’s got a French dressmaker, she does her hair a new way, and she’s getting her figure back again. She’s quite a new woman, she’s given up working for womanhood generally, and she’s getting frivolous. She’s got a club—I mean a real club—in the West End, and one of these days she’s going to give a dinner party and ask you and me to it.”
“Well, well, well, if you’re quite sure you are not doing anything foolish,” said Alfred Whittaker; “I only want you to be happy in your own way. But I want you to be quite sure that you are not doing anything foolish. It’s not natural for a woman of your age to be starved down to skin and bone.”
“My dear Alfred! Think of the breakfast I have made this morning; I have had twice as much as you.”