“A world tragedy,” his sister answered.
“I wanted to go to-night,” her mother insisted. 70 “It’s a lovely story. Mrs. Bowen was in to tell me about it––all about a Russian war bride. They built a whole town and burnt it up at the end of the story. I guess it cost half a million––and there’s fighting in it, too.”
“All right, go and take Luke. But I don’t think the movies are as good for him as working in a garden.”
“You never want me to have pleasure. Home all day with only memories of the dead for company, and then you come in as cross as a witch, ready to stick your nose in a book or go dig in the mud! Excuse me, Trudy, but a body has to speak out sometimes. Your father to the life––reading and grubbing with plants. Oh, mother’s proud of you, Mary, but if you would only get yourself up a little smarter and go out with young people you’d soon enough want Luke to go out, too! I don’t pretend to know what your judgment toward your poor old mother would be!”
Mary’s day had included a dispute with a firm’s London representative, the Constantine incident, a session at the dentist’s as a noon-recess attraction, housecleaning the office, and two mutually contradictory wires from Steve. She laid her knife and fork down with a defiant little clatter.
“I can’t burn the candle at both ends. I work all day and I have to relax when I leave the office. If my form of a good time is to read or set out primroses it is nothing to cry thief for, is it? I want you to go out, mother, as you very well know. And you are welcome to fill the house with company. Only if I’m to do a man’s work and earn his wage I must claim my spare time for myself.”
“Now listen here, dear,” interposed Trudy, who took Mary’s part when it came to a real argument, “don’t get peeved. Let me buy your next dress and show you how to dance. You’ll be surprised what a difference it will make. You’ll get so you just hate ever to think of work.”
“Splendid! Who will pay the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?” Mary thought of the wedding presents carelessly stacked about Beatrice’s apartment. One pile of them, as she measured expenses, would have paid the aforementioned gentlemen for a year or more.
“Now you’ve got her going,” Luke objected. “Say, Trudy, you don’t kill yourself tearing off any work at the shop!”