“You don’t have to squirt tears into every story you write,” retorted Betsy. “Did you ever see me cry? There are people, Barry, who manage to get on without snivelling every minute.”
“I never cry,” remarked Rosalind; “Mom spanked the last tear out of me years ago.” She rose and moved indolently to the piano.
Few professional pianists were better at her age,—thanks to “Mom,” who had been a celebrated one.
Rosalind talked and idled at the keys, played, chattered, sang enchantingly, killed loveliness with a jest, slew beauty to light a cigarette, cursed with caprice the charming theme developing or, capriciously and tenderly protected, nourished and cared for it until it grew to exquisitive maturity. Then strangled it with a “rag.”
“You little devil,” said Betsy, tremulous under the spell—“I wouldn’t strangle my own offspring as you do!—I couldn’t——” Emotion checked her.
Rosalind laughed: “It doesn’t matter when one can have all the offspring one wants.... You’ll never get on if you’re too serious, Bettina mia.”
“That’s your friend Barry talking, not you,” retorted Betsy. “He can get away with it—sitting all alone in a stuffy room where his readers can’t see him writing sob-stuff with his tongue in his cheek. But you and I had better wear faces that can be safely watched, my Rosalinda child!”
“I want to ask you,” said Rosalind, turning to Annan, “whether an audience can surmise what sort of private life one leads merely from watching one on the stage or screen.”
“I think so, in a measure,” he replied.
“Then it does pay to behave,” concluded Betsy, walking to a mirror to inspect herself. “Not guilty—so far,” she added, powdering her nose; “—am I, Barry?”