“It was a compromise, a play for time. I tried to get her to go back home, but she refused, positively. The only alternative seemed to be to get her away—quick.... Was I right?”
“Yes, I think so, under the circumstances. But the trouble itself, I can’t understand yet—Was it that abominable furniture?”
“Partly. At least that was the final straw, the match to the fuse. The whole thing had been gathering slowly for a long time. I didn’t get the entire story, of course. She wasn’t exactly coherent. It seems she ordered it on her own responsibility, and when the goods were delivered—the thing was merely inevitable, some time—that was all.”
“Inevitable? No. It was abominable of Margery—unforgivable.”
“I don’t know about that; in fact I’m inclined to differ. I still maintain it was inevitable.”
“Inevitable fiddlesticks! Harry is the best-natured man alive, and generous. He’s been too generous, too easy; that’s the trouble.” 179
“‘Generous?’” gently. “‘Generous?’... Is it generous for a man with nothing and no prospect of anything to take a girl out of a home where money was never a consideration, and transplant her into another where practically it is the only thought?... ‘Generous’ for his own pleasure, to undertake to teach her a financial lesson he knew to a moral certainty in advance she could never learn? Do you honestly call that ‘generous’?”
“But she could learn. It—was her duty.”
“Duty!” Roberts laughed tolerantly. “Is ‘duty’ in the dictionary you use a synonym for ‘cooking’ and ‘scrubbing’ and ‘drudgery’? Is that your interpretation?”
“Sometimes—in this case, yes; for a time.”