He said, "Nonsense!" but he was touched, for he didn't say anything more about my going to school then. Instead, he began to urge me to leave my position at the yards. When I said I couldn't do that, he grew really angry with me. I think he would have gone then, for he picked up his hat; but I told him I hadn't had any dinner. Neither, of course, had he, as I had come in about six-thirty. So then I made him wait while I dressed, and he took me out to dinner.
There were a number of restaurants near where I lived, but he knew of a better place down-town; so we went there, by carriage, instead. On the way he asked me where I got the suit I had on, and I told him. Then he wanted to know what I paid for it, and I told him $12. It was a good little blue serge suit, and I had a smart hat to go with it. In fact, I was beginning to dress better, and more like American girls. I asked him if he liked my suit. He said roughly:
"No," and then he added, "it's too thin." After a moment he said:
"I'm going to buy you decent clothes first of all."
I had a queer feeling that so long as I took nothing from this man, I should retain his respect. It was a stubborn, persistent idea. I could not efface from my mind his bitter words of that day on the train, and I wanted above all things to prove to him that I cared for him only for himself and not for the things I knew he could give me and wanted to give me. I never knew a man so anxious to give a woman things as was Mr. Hamilton to do things for me from the very first. So now I told him that I couldn't let him get clothes for me. That made him angrier than ever, and he wouldn't speak to me all the rest of the way. While we were having dinner (he had ordered the meal without reference to me at all, but just as if he knew what I should like), he said in that rough way he often assumed to me when he was bent upon having his way about something:
"You want me to take you with me when I come to Chicago, don't you—to dinner, theaters, and other places?"
I nodded. I did want to go with him, and I was tremendously proud to think that he wanted to take me.
"Very well, then," he said; "you'll have to dress properly."
I couldn't find any answer to that, but I inwardly vowed that I would spend every cent I made above my board on clothes.
I think he was sorry for having spoken unkindly to me, because he ceased to urge me about the school, my position, my lodgings, which he did not like at all, and now my clothes. He made me tell him all over again for the third or fourth time about last night. He kept asking me about Fred, almost as if he were trying to trap me with questions, till finally I grew so hurt by some of his questions that I wouldn't answer him. Then again he changed the subject, and wanted to know what I had been writing. That was a subject on which he knew I would chatter fluently, and I told him how I had actually dared to submit my latest to a mighty publication in New York. He said he wished he were the editor. I said: