"You absurd child!" The note of amused admonition with which she ordinarily accepted my professional exigencies turned on the note of correction. "Don't you think you put too much stress on those things?"
"What things?" She had touched upon the spring of irritation.
"Clothes, you know, and appearances. Isn't it better just to do your work well and rest upon that?"
"Pauline, if you had ever looked for an engagement you would know that getting it is largely a matter of appearing equal to it, and clothes are the better part of appearing."
"But if you know that your work is good, what do you care what people think of you?" I dodged the moral situation about to be precipitated on me.
"It's about the only way you know it is good, knowing what people think of it."
"Now see here," Pauline protested, reinforced by the evident superiority of her viewpoint to mine, "you're getting all wrong; these things you are thinking of, they are not the real things; they don't count, not in the long run; it's only the spiritual things that really matter." She had put on all the plastic effect of nobility that was part of her stock in trade with Henry Mills. I thrust out against it sharply.
"Do you realize, Pauline, that if I don't get an engagement soon I shan't be able to pay my board?"
"Oh, you poor dear!" She came over and took my hand. I don't know why women like Pauline do that, but when they do it it is a sign they are not equal to the situation and are trying to fake it with you.
"I know it is hard"—she found the cooing note with facility—"but it will come right; it always does. I've always found that there is a way provided."