He tried hard not to smile.
"You needn't go so far back—stay in the present century, if you please."
"But ever since then—even to this good day and in a newspaper office, where the atmosphere is so cold-blooded that a mosquito couldn't fly around without getting a congestive chill, you know your reputation! Why, you could give the Don horse spurs and armor, then arrive a full week ahead of him at a windmill!"
"Tommy-rot."
"Supererogation is a prettier word," I amended, but he shook his head.
"No! Six syllables are like six figures-they get you dizzy when you commence fooling with them! Besides, I was discussing your right to commit foolish acts of self-sacrificing, Grace, not mine."
"But it didn't seem foolish to me," I tried to explain.
"When you're working in this rotten newspaper office, where no woman could possibly feel at home, for the vigorous sum of seventy-five dollars a month?—Then it doesn't seem idiotic?"
"No!"
"And your mother moping and pining for the things she ought to have?"