Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come; Alice Twill’s idea of a 174 French château, however, had blown up unexpectedly.
“Well, why don’t people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?” Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary’s secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit. It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her. Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.
It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure––it almost gave her a hold on her, she fancied––for Beatrice sighed with envy at Trudy’s one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for eating candy.
“Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin,” she told Steve.
“Yes; but she works and you don’t. You don’t even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator,” he continued.
Beatrice looked at him in scorn. “Do I ever please you?”
“You married me,” he said, gallantly.
“When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I’m afraid,” was his reward. “I wish you would study French––you have such a queer education you can’t help having queer ideas. And you can’t always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn’t room for two in the same family.”
“Do you know the Bible?” he demanded.