"Your grandfather left you all that money, and when you want to do a thing all you have to do is do it. What can you know of the real sorrows and hardships of life?"
"What indeed?" responded Katie briskly.
"And your heart has never been touched—and I don't believe it ever will be," Clara continued spitefully—Katie seemed so complacent. "You have no real feeling. You're just like Wayne."
Katie laughed at that and looked at Clara; then laughed again, and
Clara flushed.
"Speaking of Wayne," said Katie in off-hand fashion, "he's been made a major."
She watched Clara as she said it. There were things Katie could be rather brutal about.
"I'm sure that's very nice," said the woman who had divorced Wayne.
"Yes, isn't it? And other things are going swimmingly. One of those things he used to be always puttering over—you may remember, Clara, mentioning, from time to time, those things he used to be puttering around with—has been adopted with a whoop. A great fuss is being made over it. It looks as though Wayne was confronted with something that might be called a future."
"I'm sure I'm very glad," said Clara, "that somebody is to have something that might be called a future. Certainly a woman with barely enough to live on isn't in much danger of being confronted with one."
Katie made no apology to herself for the pleasure she took in "rubbing it in." She remembered too many things too vividly.