“Wife-beater!”
“I’ll write my notes downtown after this, you know.”
“I suppose so. I’ll have to bribe the janitor to save me the wastebaskets. Well, if you won’t talk about Cecily, let’s talk about Washington. I get a little weak in the knees when I think of all I’ll have to learn. I don’t mean to get too many clothes, either. But the ones I do get——”
“I was wondering if I hadn’t better go on alone at first. I could get a bit adjusted and I can’t see how you can leave your mother.”
Her face clouded. “I know, Matthew. I seem a heartless brute, but there’s nothing I can do; and she gets so irritated at me now; and whenever I go there and try to do anything she and Mrs. Ellis are hobnobbing over horrors in that dreadful way and everything is so awful. Matthew, don’t leave me with them!”
“Why, no, you’d have your own house. It would only be for a little while. But I’ll take you if you want to go so badly. I do get a little sorry for your father. He’s——”
“But I tell you there’s nothing I can do for him. I have tried! But I can’t sit through endless hours of moving pictures and silence.”
“Well, dear, you can’t help if you feel like that. It is probably true you could do nothing.”
“Where are you going to-night?”
“Going to work unless you need me.”