“Oh, I laugh at everybody,” said Mouse. “People are made to be laughed at. There’s something ridiculous in everyone if you only look for it. Your daughter seems ridiculous to me because she gives herself goody-goody airs, which nobody has nowadays; she looks as if she were always doing penance for your ill-gotten riches.”
This shaft hit the gold of fact so neatly in the eye that William Massarene colored angrily under his dull skin. But his rage was against his daughter rather than against his tormentor. Why could not Katherine look and act like other young women of her time?
“Yes, I know,” said Mouse, answering his unspoken reflections. “It must be very annoying to have a perpetual monitress in one’s own daughter, and of course you couldn’t make your millions with clean hands; nobody can; but society gives you lots of soap and water after you’ve made them, so what does it matter? Besides, a daughter shouldn’t look as if she were always saying, ‘Out, damned spot,’ as Ellen Terry does. However, that is just the kind of thing that will please Ronald. He will think it such an admirable spirit in her to despise your ill-gotten gold.”
“Perhaps he would not require a dowry of dirty money with her, then?” said Mr. Massarene, allowing for one instant the natural sarcastic shrewdness in him to escape.
Mouse was for the moment discomfited; she had never seen this unpleasant side of him before. Then, with her most insolent audacity, she blew some cigarette smoke over to where he sat.
“My dear Billy, perhaps Ronald would dispense with a dowry if he liked her well enough; he is fool enough for anything. But you wouldn’t save a penny by that—I should take it all over as commission!”
Mr. Massarene was dumb from astonishment. He had known many sharp dealers in the Far West, but nobody who had ever for coolness equalled his fair friend and patroness.
He slapped his hand on his knee with vulgar effusion in his mingled feelings of amazement and admiration.
“Well, my lady, damn me if there’s many boys in Bowery who could afford to give points to you!”
She laughed. Of course it was only a joke; but the joke made her feel for the moment a little insecure and uncomfortable, as you might feel if you found a packet of dynamite in your sandwich-case.