“Admitted!” he said teasingly; “you can’t understand me, Gerty; I have vagaries.”
“Oh, I suppose that’s genius, isn’t it?”
“Precisely, genius is a form, a mild one, of adolescent insanity.”
“Well, don’t get violent while I’m here, Robert,” she retorted; “I have enough of whirlwind and tornado just now with Margaret. Heavens, how glad I’d be if I didn’t have to go to Omaha with her!”
“Poor child, must you?” Allestree stopped painting and looked around with open sympathy.
“Oh, yes, I must,” Gerty replied with resignation; “I’m homely and poor, Robert, and they will take me along labelled—‘Propriety, reduced gentlewoman as secretary and chaperon, age near thirty, conduct exemplary, travelling expenses paid!’”
“I’d take to the woods, Gerty!” he laughed, not without sympathy; he dimly imagined the sting under the words.
“Or do something outrageous and get sent home—I wish I could, but I’d starve,” Gerty said calmly; “nothing else keeps me in the straight and narrow way but the fact that meat is twenty cents a pound and bread five. Isn’t it sordid? But I’m really dreadfully sorry for Margaret!”
“I was beginning to lose sight of that fact,” remarked Allestree dryly.
“I’m not sorry for Fox though,” she added, laughing maliciously.