“All right. I’ll cry my eyes out, and I’ll keep writing for you to come home.”
“Oh, come now! Tell me what you will do all the time.”
“Oh, lots of things. I’ll paint pictures, too, and––I’ll write––and help mother just as I do now; and I’ll study art without going to Paris.”
“Will you, you rogue! I’d marry you first and take you with me if it were possible, and you should study in Paris, too––that is, if you wished to.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful! But I don’t know––I believe I’d rather write than paint.”
“I believe I’d rather have you. They say there are no really great women artists. It isn’t in the woman’s nature. They haven’t the strength. Oh, they have the delicacy and all that; it’s something else they lack.”
“Humph! It’s rather nice to have us lacking in one thing and another, isn’t it? It gives you men something to do to discover and fill in the lacks.”
“I know one little lady who lacks in nothing but years.”
Betty looked out of the window and down into the yard. “There is mother driving in. Let’s go down and have cookies and milk. I’m sure you need cookies and milk.”