"Oh, please, Randy——"
Three days of such intensive argument had settled it. Becky decided that it was, after all, better to be an authoress. "There was Louisa Alcott, you know, Randy."
He was scornful. "Women weren't made for that—to sit in an attic and write. Why do you keep talking about doing things, Becky? You'll get married when you grow up and that will be the end of it."
"I am not going to get married, Randy."
"Well, of course you will, and I shall marry and be a lawyer like my father, and perhaps I'll go to Congress."
Later he had a leaning towards the ministry. "If I preached I could make the world better, Becky."
That was the time when she had come down for Hallowe'en, and it was on Sunday evening that they had talked it over in the Bird Room at Huntersfield. There had been a smouldering fire on the wide hearth, and the Trumpeter Swan had stared down at them with shining eyes. They had been to church that morning and the text had been, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."
"I want to make the world better, Becky," Randy had said in the still twilight, and Becky had answered in an awed tone, "It would be so splendid to see you in the pulpit, Randy, wearing a gown like Dr. Hodge."
But the pulpit to Randy had meant more than that. And the next day when they walked through the deserted mill town, he had said, "Everybody is dead who lived here, and once they were alive like us."