“Well, then. And Elinor's sporting. She isn't the kind that needs six butlers to live—she doesn't live that way now. That's just pride, Ted, thinking that—and a rather bum variety of pride when you come down to it. I hate these people who moan around and won't be happy unless they can do everything themselves—they're generally the kind that give their wives a charge account at Lucile's and ten dollars a year pocket money and go into blue fits whenever poor spouse runs fifty cents over her allowance.”
Ted pauses, considering. Finally,
“No, Ollie—I don't think I'm quite that kind of a fool. And almost thou convincest me—and all that. But—well—that isn't the chief difficulty, after all.”
“Well, what is?” from Oliver, annoyedly.
Ted hesitates, speaking slowly.
“Well—after the fact that I'm not sure—France,” he says at last, and his mouth shuts after the word as if it never wanted to open again.
Oliver spreads both hands out hopelessly.
“Are you never going to get over that, you ass?”
“You didn't do the things I did,” from Ted, rather difficultly. “If you had—”
“If I had I'd have been as sorry as you are, probably, that I'd knocked over the apple cart occasionally. But I wouldn't spend the rest of my life worrying about it and thinking I wasn't fit to go into decent society because of what happened to most of the A.E.F. Why you sound as if you'd committed the unpardonable sin. And it's nonsense.”