Recalling the shift of offices Steve suppressed a smile. “It was nothing important, Bea, and I am mighty busy. Your father never had time to play; he worked a great deal harder than I have worked.”
“I can’t help that. You must not expect me to be a little stay-at-home. You knew that before we were even engaged. Besides, I’m no child–––”
“No, but you act like one.” He spoke almost before he thought. “You are a woman nearly twenty-six years old, yet you haven’t the poise of girls eighteen that I have known. Still, they were farm or working girls. I’ve sometimes wondered 100 what it is that makes you and your friends always seem so childish and naïve––at times. Aren’t you ever going to grow up––any of you?”
“Do you want a pack of old women?” she demanded. “How can you find fault with my friends? You seem to forget how splendidly they have treated you.”
A cave man must be muzzled, handcuffed, and Under the anæsthetic of unreality and indifference to be a satisfactory husband for a modern Gorgeous Girl.
“Why shouldn’t they treat me splendidly? I have never robbed or maltreated any of them. Tell me something. It is time we talked seriously. We can’t exist on the cream-puff kind of conversation. What in the world has your way of going through these finishing schools done for you?”
The dove-coloured eyes flickered angrily. “I had a terribly good time,” she began. “Besides, it’s the proper thing––girls don’t come out at twenty and marry off and let that be the end of it. You really have a much better time now if you wait until you are twenty-five, and then you somehow have learned how to be a girl for an indefinite period. As for the finishing school in America––well, we had a wonderful sorority.”
“I’ve met college women who were clear-headed persons deserving the best and usually attaining it––but I’ve never taken a microscope to the sort of women playing the game from the froth end. I’m wondering what your ideas were.”
“You visited me––you met my friends––my chaperons––you wrote me each day.”
“I was in love and busy making my fortune. I 101 was as shy as a backwoods product––you know that––and afraid you would be carried off by someone else before I could come up to the sum your father demanded of me. I have nothing but a hazy idea as to a great many girls of all sorts and sizes––and mostly you.”