She vouchsafed the information that Dorothea was a romantic fool.
I denied it.
She dealt what she considered to be a body-blow by affirming that your property would not be in your hands till you were twenty-one.
I replied that I didn’t care if it didn’t reach you till you were a hundred and twenty-one.
She said, “Don’t be silly,” and asked me if I had ever thought of changing my name back to Forrest from Hogg.
I inquired in return if she would mind the loss of six thousand dollars a year, supposing that I should take such a step.
She reflected and said that she should, but she would rather lose it than take the name; and that we could rub along on Dorothea’s money, she supposed, if that was my idea of a pleasant life.
I hastened to say that I would relinquish the six thousand without a pang, confident that I could make a living anyway; but that it would be disloyal to my good old uncle, whose bounty had given me a college course, two years at Oxford and three at Harvard Law School. It had also permitted me to give my services to the United States Shipping Board without compensation.
She said she thought it was very selfish in a government to accept a man’s whole time and give him no remuneration; that the Secretary of the Treasury had only to say to the banks, “Let there be money,” and there was money. There would be plenty for everybody if only the engravers and laborers at the Mint would not strike.