“Oh, well, Girl-o’-Mine,” he admonished. “We needn’t be selfish and demand a monopoly of all the happiness that’s going around to-day. The springtime of life is all fine and wonderful. But we’ve got to admit there’s many a love flower that blossoms in Indian Summer. And it’s usually all the more fragrant and exquisite on that account. Where’s the telephone?”
VI
In their rooms at The Worthy that night, after Madelaine and Nathan had left town, Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith locked their door carefully. Mrs. Forge had read in newspapers of “strange men” who “prowled” around hotel corridors.
“Whew!” cried Edith, flopping down in a rocker and sprawling her ungainly legs. “After all that class, I’m plumb bowled over. My Gawd, Ma, think of it! And Natie’s gotta spend all the rest of life livin’ up to it. Poor Natie!”
Mrs. Forge stood by the window, holding to the lace drape and using a badly overworked handkerchief as it was needed at her features. Whatever else might be said for Mrs. Anna Forge in her sunset years, she had not forgotten how to weep.
“I think it was all heavenly, Edie. For one afternoon—for the first time in all my life—I just reveled in it. And I think Natie’s the luckiest boy in the world.”
“Baggin’ a million dollars? You bet! But think of havin’ to sit around all the rest of life on your manners and never darin’ to open your mouth for fear o’ puttin’ your foot in it! Gawd, it’d have me in a sanatorium in a month!”
“Nathan’s got what he wanted and deserved. He can’t help but be happy with that beautiful wife and surrounded by fine things.”
“Sufferin’ catfish, Ma! You don’t mean to say you’d wanner live up to it, too? Then it ain’t hard to see where Natie gets his crazy ideas for swell things and manners. You can knock Pa all you wanner. But he’s my dad and I’m his girl. And I kiss my soup at table if I feel like it, and if I wanner I loll ’round the house in a blanket. That’s my privilege. No airs to me. You always know just where to find me. I’m honest!”
And Edith fully believed that she was and remained smugly content, the “mother of seven.”