"I don't know what to think," she said.
"And I do because I'm old and wise. You see, Miss Torsen, in the old days people didn't think so much about cleverness and secondary schools and the right to vote; they lived their lives on a different plane, they were naïve. I wonder if that wasn't a pretty good way to live. Of course people were cheated in those days, too, but they didn't smart under it so; they bore it with greater natural strength. We have lost our healthy powers of endurance."
"It's getting cold," she said. "Shall we go home?--Yes, of course that's all quite true, but we're living in modern times. We can't change the times; I can't, at any rate; I've got to keep up with the times."
"Yes, that's what it says in the Oslo morning paper. Because it used to say so in the Neue Freie Presse. But a person with character goes his own way up to a point, even if the majority go a different way."
"Yes--well, I'm really going to tell you something now," she said, stopping. "I go to a really sensible school during the day."
"Do you?" I said.
"Only this time I'm learning housekeeping; isn't that a good thing?"
"You mean you're learning to cut sandwiches for yourself?"
"Ha, ha!"
"Well, you said you weren't going to marry!"