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|---|---|---|---|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We owe for all but the left back tire, Trudy said before any one had the chance to hint of the fact;"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How do I know Alice Twill will really come across? he began."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And I suppose you've got the machine covered with mud, too. Anyway, what do I know about decorating? I work on my reputation and everyone's sympathies and I'm in fear all the time some real decorator will turn up and show my hand or else refuse to work under me and split commissions. You're too damned optimistic."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If I wasn't optimistic where would we be? Starving, she said with no attempt at politeness. Common courtesies between them had long since been dispensed with."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I've gotten you nearly everything you have, and if you'll do as I say I'll go right on getting things for you. But you're lazy and jealous--that's what's the matter."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why, you poor nobody, people only tolerate you because of me. They roar behind your back."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Do they? They pity me because I'm married to such a weak fish! Men are nice to you because of me--and there isn't a woman I've met that I have not made afraid of me. Beatrice hasn't the will power of a slug; you can hand her flattery in chunks as big as boulders and she swallows them without choking. It's her husband who sees through us."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What--the goat tender? Oh, beg pardon--treading on someone else's toes. Or didn't they have goats in Michigan?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "We'll never hang together another year, she said, recklessly."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The first chance I have to exchange you for a real man your day is over."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You think any one else would marry you?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I don't think. I just go ahead grabbing everything I can, and when a person has to grab for someone else as well as herself it keeps them moving."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You're a crude and impossible little fool."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Where is Luke? she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, Mary mine, you don't know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk--really talk to someone."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Luke is at basketball---- Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why, what is it?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You ought to hate me--selfish, insincere hypocrite--cheat--liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren't worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven't had the right things to eat."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You're so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes. You can't live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited--not enough sleep--and always that eternal upstage pose!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I'm all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why not leave him?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Without any one else to marry?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I couldn't go to work again."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought you worked rather hard right now."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "That's different. I'm working to have a good time. And I'm a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn't happy."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tell me some more about yourself."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, I am a fraud, she said, with sudden honesty."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wouldn't come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don't know why, Mary dear; it's not as horrid as it sounds. I think it's because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I'd be the better woman for it in meeting my problems."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You're growing up, that's all. And I'm not good--not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard--terribly hard about something? I've never told any one before. I can't really tell what it is!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing--and I've made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes and jealous dreams.... You see, I'm quite human."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, my poor girl!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We could almost retire, Trudy suggested;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gad, commented her father, during the heat of the argument,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He doesn't care what I do, she hastened to assure him."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Of course he will--he ought to--I'm paying for it. He'll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice's will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I'm going to signal them to begin."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, don't touch my room or I'll burn down the whole plant, her father warned."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And if I were you I'd tell Steve first--it's only right."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But it's my money,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, yes, I know--but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn't agreed on beforehand."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dear old papa."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If my wife insists, go ahead--but don't move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I'm not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure class, and I'm too old to be kidded into thinking I'm one of them now. But I did make a mistake, he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought the world owed me more than a living--that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant in time."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You don't know how often I've wanted to come and see you, he said, unashamedly, delighted that Luke was out of the way and he could play in his fashion the same as Beatrice did in hers."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It isn't business, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You assume so much formality at the office that though I admit it may be wise I miss the real you."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You mean you just trumped up an excuse----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I do. The DeGraff muddle can wait. It's nice to be able just to sprawl about--sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don't quite see how I'll ever live up to it. As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "May I?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Do! Only you ought not to be here at all"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why not?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish, she surprised him by answering."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why not think of the other chap occasionally?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh--you mean my coming here. He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You mean to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can't say that. I won't listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why not your wife?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We're not friends--merely married. He lit his pipe and flipped the match away."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cheap to say, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It wouldn't do the slightest good to tell you what I think."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I've never been as lonesome in my life as now--when I'm a rich man and the husband of a very lovely woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I've been in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I've been coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly on the sod I think I've struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a hand."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why ask me?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't just know. I don't think I shall ever be quite so sure of anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing one thing--he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second helping. Isn't that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you know you used up your joy allotment in anticipation--and it has been so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not pay."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that is true enough. I didn't know or care whether your hair was red or your eyes green--but I know now that you have gray eyes, and----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You really want to know my opinions?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "As much as I used to seek out the stock reports."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the wholesale to be reassembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old American stock--which is quite wrong, for their example causes spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Go on,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Now there's something wrong when we've come to this, and the wrong does not lie with these people but with those they imitate--Gorgeous Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles, slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl--and it's wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls--and the heathen in Africa--and wonder why golf doesn't bring your blood pressure down to normal--when your grandfather had such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don't you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer's interest on the suddenly accumulated principle?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Keep on,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs wistfully sniffing at passers-by in hopes of finding a permanent friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly being overloaded for the day's haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers' ads and vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up, gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and twelfth stories--the general chasing after nothing, saving nothing and, saddest of all, the complacent delusion that they have achieved something well worth while--it makes me willing to earn and learn as I do."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't leave me in the quicksand. What can we do about it?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But we must grasp the other side of the matter--that all play and no work make her simply impossible; that culture and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand. The American woman really is--and must continue to be--the all-round, regular fellow of the feminine world. Then she will not only teach a great and needed truth to her backward European sisters but she will produce a great future race. American women have tried frivolity in nearly every form and they have worked seriously likewise; they have intruded into men's professions and careers and in cases have beaten men at their own game. They have successfully broken down the narrow prejudice and limitations which the Victorian era tried making immortal under the title of sentiment--but after they have had the reward of victory and the knowledge of the game, why not be square, as they really are, and do the part the Great Plan meant them to do? Be women first--let the career take the woman if need be, but always thank the good Lord if it needn't be."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And to think you have been working for me,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And love must be the leavener of it all--with all her progress and her ability, trained talents and clever logic, the American woman must not and will not renounce her romance--for it is part of God's very promise of immortality."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "How often may I come here?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And now I'll make you a cup of coffee. And never let me catch you here again!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty, he told Trudy soon after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas Day. Why doesn't someone tell her to stop?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, why don't people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes; but she works and you don't. You don't even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Do I ever please you?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You married me,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I'm afraid, was his reward."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wish you would study French--you have such a queer education you can't help having queer ideas. And you can't always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn't room for two in the same family."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Do you know the Bible?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There you are! You think I haven't studied in my own fashion. Well, if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don't, Stevuns! Do you know the latest dance from Spain--the _paso-doble_? Of course you don't. You don't know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You haven't read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when they're mentioned. You won't play bridge, you can't sing or make shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you've made a fortune--enjoy it!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away, her father said by way of clumsy consolation."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And he bought you a mighty handsome gift."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But I have one quite as lovely, Beatrice objected."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It was unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let the police arrest everybody."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I hate duplicates; I always want something different and novel."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It's a good thing I gave you a check,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, because Gay can always find me something --brightening."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ask something easy. A mob of workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers' assistants--that's all I know. But not one of them touches my room!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "All right, papa. She kissed him prettily."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And as I'm dead for sleep and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run along?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I didn't bother to telephone you or wire--I got in at eight this morning and came right up here. I knew you'd not be up, he added, curtly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Would you mind waiting in Miss Faithful's office until I'm at liberty?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I've been thinking about you, Miss Faithful, and I do envy you. Do you know why? You have more of my husband than I have; that was what I came to tell you. For business is his very life and you are his business partner. I only have the tired remnant that occasionally wanders homeward."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, no, that's not true. You see----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I've decided that if business is more important to my husband than his wedding anniversary I shall be of importance to him in his business, she continued."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Be careful--you've a rival looming ahead."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm glad Beatrice was not with me, she said, sweetly,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I think I've earned it,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A year ago I went away and you stayed. Of course you have earned it. But I am going to miss you."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It's a fortunate thing that she isn't going to visit the North Pole; she'd be so chilly when she returned you'd have to wrap the entire office in a warming pad. I was thinking this morning that with the way she lives and manages she must have saved some money. Do you know if she has--and how much? I hope you won't pay her her salary while she is gone. It's no wonder she can afford nervous prostration if you do!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I didn't know she had it,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Whatever it is, then, that makes her take all this time. The way employees act, walking roughshod in their rights! And now, deary, hurry and get well, for I've a wonderful surprise for you. She knelt beside the couch and patted his cheek."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm going to be your private secretary during her absence--yes, I am. As soon as I finish making the mannikins for the knitting bags at the kermis. Then I'm going to try to take her place--well, a tiny part of her place to start with, and work into the position gradually. Yes, I am. I'm determined to try it. I've worried and worried to decide what to do with myself."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You don't know how I've missed you, Steve told Mary upon her return."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't I look it?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How stupid! How can she--when the wicker basket is the one logical place for----"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So you really missed me?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Missed you! Heaven alone can record the unselfish struggle I endured to let you play. I give you my word."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And now I will be polite enough to ask if you had a good time?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Very! And Mrs. O'Valley?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We don't care about Mrs. Gorgeous Girl or any one else. We are quite content with each other. True, this is still platonic friendship--with one of us--but all tropical twilight is of short duration. It won't be platonic much longer. So let's talk about ourselves all we like!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "She is well,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She came down here, she wrote me, when she wanted to find out about something or other. I've forgotten just what."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So after several weeks my wife appeared on my business horizon and hung that mirror up and had those other things moved in and then she discovered that the impudent girls were all copying her coats and hats and stuff and even used her sort of perfume, and she decided that her duty lay not in making me a competent secretary but in reforming these extravagant young persons so that she could wear a model gown in comfort and not see it copied within a month. It was quite an experience for her; she was here about five days. Miss Sartwell just moved her desk out there and we managed nicely. Beatrice also had a private teacher for typewriting and so on, but she gave it all up because she felt the confinement and long hours made her head ache and she gained weight. She fled in haste. Sorry she had to do so, but under the circumstances it was better to jeopardize my business career than her own figure!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Aren't you a little unfair?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Am I? I never thought so. Wait--I must finish the tale. For a whole week after being my business partner she tried what she called holiness as a cosmetic, and became high-church and quite trying. At the end of that time she felt a veritable dynamo of nerves and scandal and proceeded to become a liberated and advanced woman. You'll soon enough see what I mean. She doesn't run to short-haired ladies with theories so much as to hollow-eyed gentlemen embroidering cantos in the drawing room and trying to make the world safe for poetry. De-luxe adventuresses strike her as harmonious just now. You'll hear about one Sezanne del Monte who is staying in town and living off of Bea and her set."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The woman who is divorced every season--and stars in musical comedy?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The same. Sezanne is now writing the intimate story of her life; sort of heart throbs instead of punctuation marks--lots of asterisks, you know, separating the paragraphs. Beatrice is going to finance the publication of it and Gay is going to be the sales manager. Yes, it's funny, but a blamed nuisance when you come home and you find yourself wandering through a crowd of Sezanne del Montes and Gays and Trudys, all bent on playing parlour steeplechase, and you can't find a plain chair to sit down or eat a plain meal or read a newspaper. It's more than a blamed nuisance--it's cause for a trial by jury, he added, whimsically."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Now what's wrong?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It isn't cricket to tell all this."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Forget you ever thought twice of this man ; and the dreamer part urging:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You have earned the right to love him. She has not. Just be fair--merely fair. You have the right; don't let your opportunity slip by."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It was with a charming timidity that she tip-toed into the office"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, you must keep on with the grind. And you want your sort of playmates and fun, and it's such decent, upright fun in comparison--oh, pshaw!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Business isn't quite so good, he began anew in an impersonal, even voice."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Mr. Constantine thinks that the abnormal prosperity is on the wane for keeps--we must prepare for it--but Mr. Constantine has practically retired since you have been away. He's not well. To-morrow morning, if you don't mind, I'll take you over there and we can straighten out some things for him. He is selling the greater share of stock to men from the West. And he's saved out some pretty nice sugar plums to hand over to me. I haven't been asked whether or not I want them."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm sorry."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I knew you would be, Miss Iconoclast."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why do you accept them?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How can I refuse?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "By saying you are not prepared to be a mental wreck at forty--which you will be if you try such a gigantic scheme with so little preparation. I've an idea that when Mr. Constantine is known to have withdrawn from the business world there will be a change in many things. And when you are known to be alone in the fort--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Go on, he demanded, irritably."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Can I never make you understand how much I want your advice, your opinions, your scoldings?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I think you will have new enemies with whom to deal--enemies you never thought existed. I don't believe you can deal with them because you have always been so cotton-woolled, so to speak, by being Constantine's special project----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I've done what I've done myself, he interrupted,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You think you have, she corrected."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You have done what you have because Constantine was back of you--and now he is an old, tired man, and very soon he will think more of his days with Hannah than of the present. Which is perfectly safe for him to do. Because Mr. Constantine reckoned on his enemies he knew to a man who hated him and who was afraid of him, who admired him and who would be indifferent; and that is just as essential to success as to reckon on your friends. You never did that--you hadn't the time--it was all so dazzling and sudden with the war helping things along at breakneck speed. You will find that if you have an Achilles' heel it will be because you did not reckon on your enemies and are somewhat like a blindfolded man with money in your purse set down in a strange locality.... There. How does that sound for a welcome?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'd like enemies, he said."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'd like to see them try jumping at my throat. I'd make them cry quits. You don't frighten me; you stimulate me."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "That was my intention"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't go--or let me come to supper,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course I'm going to be dragged some place this evening, so I wouldn't have much time--but may I come to supper? I'm going out of town next week. There, isn't that a good reason to come to-night?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Suppose the world knew this--our little business world?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hang the world!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You never did. You flattered it, and were delighted when the world patted you on the head and said, 'Nice Stevens, come in and bring your bags of gold--the living's fine.'"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Are you starting in to tell me that people would misunderstand my motives? Sezanne del Monte has chapters along those lines. And Beatrice has quite a fad of slumming and taking a notebook along to write down new slang phrases or oaths or bits of heart-broken philosophy spilled in a drunken moment.... I've grown careless to everything presumably orderly and conventional. I'm ready to walk the plank for my indifference if need be--but I do want to come home with you for supper!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wonder if it would do any good to try explaining--really explaining and not fibbing or pretending----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It has always done me good when you have explained--and I can't imagine you telling cheap untruths."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So she wears her prettiest frock for this man--a wooden-faced bookkeeper perhaps; or a preoccupied president--and she dreams of him and is jealous of him and very likely gossips about him. And the years pass and she stays just as shut away and misunderstood and starved. And sometimes a woman, originally the most honest in the world, under these circumstances will deliberately steal another woman's husband if she has the chance. Yes, she will--she does."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "What do you mean, Mary?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, the business woman's life isn't all beer and skittles. We're expected to lie about our hearts, yet be as reliable as an adding machine about our columns of figures; to be shut away from the social world, thrown with men more hours a day than their wives see them and yet remain immovable, aloof, disinterested! Just good fellows, you know. Isn't it hideous to think I've really told the truth?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I never appreciated you before. Please don't feel that telling me this will make any difference save that I'll stay aloof--as you suggest. I can forget it, somewhat, if that will make you feel any better about it. It is all quite true and equally hopeless--true things usually are--and if you like I'll send you home in the car, because you must be a trifle tired."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thank you,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You look as tired as before we went away,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, no. This shade makes everyone look ghastly,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'll have to get a hump on and make my pile, he consoled."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't want my sister being all tired out before she's too old to have a good time."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A good time? Mary repeated."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are you inoculated, too?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What's wrong with a good time? I guess Steve O'Valley plays all he likes!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, dear, I guess he does,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Let's phone cook to bring over our dinner. Then our husbands can come along or not just as they like. We'll have a parlour picnic; and no one will bother about being dressed. And we'll go to the nickel dance hall later."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I wanted to ask you if Mary Faithful has returned, she said, throwing down the manuscript as he came in."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heavens, don't look like a thundercloud! You used to complain about getting into evening dress for dinner; and now when they are as informal as a church supper you row even more. How was papa? Did you go in to see him? Does the house look terrible?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course I didn't see your father at two in the morning; he was asleep. Your aunt fell into a bucket of plaster."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Plaster! Why did the men leave it where she could fall into it? Did it hurt her dress?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "No, just her bones. Steve laughed in spite of himself."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The dress hadn't started to begin where the bones hit the bucket."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Aunt Belle will try to look like a Kate Greenaway creation. And isn't Jill stout? I'd eat stones before I'd get like her. Well, what about the Faithful woman?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why such a title? It was always Mary Faithful, and even Mary."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I don't know--but ever since I worked with you this summer I've realized what an easy time she has. She isn't burdened with friends and social duties. It's all so clearcut and straight-ahead sailing for her. I suppose she laughs at her day's work."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "She has returned."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Then we can go to the Berkshires. Sezanne knows an artist and some people from Chicago who are ripping company and they are going to visit her cousin at Great Barrington and we are all invited there----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Once and for all, Steve said, shortly, to his own surprise,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I am not in on this! Just count yourself a fair young widow for the time being. I cannot run my business, help close up your father's affairs, be a social puppet, and go chasing off with bob-haired freaks to the Berkshires, and expect to survive. I'm going to work and keep on the job--it will be bad enough when I have to live in an Italian villa. Who knows what new tortures that will bring? But for a few months I am certain of my whereabouts, so plan on going alone."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "So you won't come with me! Oh, Steve, sometimes I can just see the whole mistake--you should never have made a fortune. Rather you should have been a nice foreman with a meek little wife in four-dollar hats and a large portion of offspring. You should have lived in a model bungalow with even a broom closet in the kitchen and leaded windows at one side. You would have been a socialist and headed labour-union picnics. But as my husband and my father's assistant and all that--you are as impossible as that Faithful woman would be if she tried to be a lady!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If you wish to make some radical change regarding your husband would you mind waiting until he has had a chance at a shower bath and some breakfast?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Good morning --wondering if he looked confused--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wanted to say that I am on the country-club committee to welcome English golfers, and I'll be away this week off and on. And--and whenever you want me to I'll try to keep under cover for a bit.... I think I do appreciate your telling me the truth last night more than anything else that has ever happened to me; there was something so stoically splendid about it--and I don't want to abuse the confidence. Please don't mind my just mentioning it, I'll promise not to do so again; and we'll go on as before. I was a cad to play about your fireplace--quite wrong--and you had to make me realize it. Do you know, I was half afraid you'd send in your resignation this morning? Women always do those things in books. Please say something and help a chap out."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I have my living and Luke's living to make, and I could not resign unless you asked me to do so, she told him."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wondered whether or not you would feel it the thing for me to do. It is a unique situation, she said in a slightly more animated tone--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Her gray eyes were quite fearless in their honesty as she glanced up."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I feel that I can settle down in an even routine and be of more service to everyone."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We'll be friends,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I wanted to add a postscript, she interrupted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "That's only running true to form, isn't it? Here it is: If you ever at any time, because you are emotional and in many ways untried, find yourself unhappy and at cross purposes, and try to lean on a sentimental crutch which inclines in my direction--I shall leave this office just as they do in novels. And I shall not come back, which they always do in novels. This would deprive you of a good employee and myself of a good position and be foolish all round. You men are no different from us women; once a woman knows a man loves her she cannot quite hate him even if her heart is another's. Instinctively she labels him as a rainy-day proposition and during some wild thunderstorm--well, idiotic things happen! Whereas if she never knew he cared she might go about finding a mild mission in life. A man is the same; and since I have trusted you with my secret, and that secret happens to concern yourself, the logical consequence is that you will never quite hate me because I care. In some moods you might even try telling yourself that you cared, too. Then I should not only leave your employ but I should stop caring."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Would you really?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Really. I never can bring myself to believe in warmed-over magic."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Then I shall never have any such moods."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course Steve thinks a woman should drudge and slave over those crying mites as if the nation depended upon it, she concluded,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm sure the children get on well enough. Just think, if you had to plan all the meals and dress and undress them and all the baths--ugh, I never could! And when Steve begins his eloquent stories about these nursemaids who neglect children or dope them or do something dreadful I simply leave the room. He actually told Mrs. Ostrander that he saw her nurse slap her child across the face, and proceeded to add: 'It is never fair to strike a child that way. It breeds bad things in him. And he wasn't doing anything; it was just nurse's day for nerves.' Of course the Ostranders will never forget it. Now, Mrs. Ostrander is a member of the Mothers' Council, and a dear. She just slaved over her children's nursery and she reads all their books before she allows the nurse to read them aloud. I'm sure no children were ever brought up as scientifically; they have a wonderful schedule. She told me she had never held them except when they were having their pictures made--never!--and that crying strengthens the lungs. Of course Steve says we feed our lap dogs when they whine but close the door on the baby when he tries it. So what can you do with such a person?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You have worked very hard, haven't you? he asked."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But you have wonderful results."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Do you think so? Everyone hates me now, for there will never be another royal bedroom set like mine on the market--when you think that Gay skirmished about and won it for me, it is quite remarkable. And it shows what Gay can do when he has a little encouragement. Alice Twill was almost cross-eyed and crying; her husband nipped the château idea in the bud. New York men are coming here to take photographs next week. I wish the garden were in better shape. They are going to run feature stories about it.... Oh, Steve, do you think of any new place to go this summer?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought we had just moved to Venice,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I must have all the office force come and see this--it would be such a treat. And we can serve tea on the lawn."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Do. They don't often take time to go to museums."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If she gets a live lion--and she will, because I'm writing to a circus man now, Gay told Trudy--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm going to sprain my ankle and be laid up from the day the beast arrives until he goes--he won't tarry long, the police won't have it. But I'm not going to take any chances. Still, it would never do to make a fat commission on the deal and then act as if I were afraid to come over and play cannibal with him. I guess you can go,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You are cheap, she said."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, I will go! I'd just as soon be eaten by a lion as to have to live with a shrimp."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You cannot keep him, even if you pulled all his teeth and taught him to be a dope fiend, Steve said in desperation after the roars of Tawny Adonis had been reported to the police as annoying."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He is growing bigger every day and all he has done is demolish flowers and shrubs and chew up fence posts. I'm sorry for him, and I'm not particularly afraid of him, but if there was an accident with a child even the owner of a dominating garden note could not expect to go scot-free."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She is going to the West Indies with an artist friend, and they are going to make a marvellous collection of water-colour paintings of birds and flowers, a sort of memorial to the boy. Jill says she will sell them and give the proceeds for the _crèche_ charity. Well, that is all very well for Jill to do; she has a real heartache to live down. But when you have no earthly reason to go and paint wild birds and flowers and you are bored to distraction with everything--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meaning yourself? asked Trudy."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Really?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are you ever bored?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Only enough to be fashionable. You see I have to live Gay's life and career and my own at the same time. Instinctively Trudy knew this caused envy in her hostess's heart for a multitude of reasons."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gay never amounted to anything until we were married --she paused for this to take full effect--"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why don't you diet seriously? she purred."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It's only right for your true friends to tell you. The double chin is permanent, I'm afraid."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Perhaps I will diet, was all she said, smiling sweetly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And tell Gay he must come see me to-morrow. I have a plan that I want to tell him--and no one else. Besides, there is a flaw in the last pair of candlesticks he bought for me."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I thought you were going to stay away until evening, he said."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You spoiled the sale."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did I? What were you about to do--play soul mate if they'd take the old things? I'm the one who found those prints in a second-hand store and had sense enough to buy the lot. I'm the one who found the remnants of cretonne you paste them on--and told you to charge ten dollars each--and I'm the one who sits out in the little back room and pastes them on, too!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You are the crudest thing,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I slapped you once for calling me a crude little fool--and the next time you try it I'll do better than that! She was unable to control her temper."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If you think being a bachelor and languishing in this place would keep you afloat you're mistaken. It's me--I'm the one that buys the bargains and runs the sewing machine half the night, sends out the bills and wheedles the salesmen into looking at you--to say nothing of doing the housekeeping, and keeping every good-looking woman afraid of me, yet polite. Why, if you were alone any real business man could come in here and start a shop and put you behind the bench overnight. You're nothing! You never were. You lived on a dead man's reputation until you married me, and now you're living on a redheaded girl's nerve. I'll scold as shrilly as I like. If the neighbours hear, all the better!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Who told you to wear gray-velvet smocks in your drawing-room shop and to have soft ties poured down softer collars? You look a hundred per cent, better than when you hopped round in a check suit that gave you a gameboard appearance. I did that. If I'd ever worked for O'Valley as I have for you, thinking I'd get a good time out of it somehow, I'd have had Mary Faithful on the run."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why should I? she answered, aggrievedly. Steve looked unusually handsome this afternoon, and seemed to fit into the antique chair; and, in contrast to her contemplated property doll, Beatrice felt amiable and willing to play for favour."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I haven't asked you for one quarter of it."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "That's the trouble--your father has gone on paying your bills, and you don't seem to realize I am not an enormously rich man--and never will be, abnormal business conditions having ceased. We are back where we started, so to speak, and I don't look for a time of unheralded prosperity for some days to come. I was figuring up while I was away, in detail; and here are the results. He handed her a memorandum."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You see? I earn a splendid living and I have a neat nest egg not to be despised. But I have no Italian-villa income. Your father has, so you came back to your father to take his money and I am merely a necessary accessory to the entire ensemble."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, no, Stevuns! She was quite the romantic parasite as she came and knelt beside him in coaxing attitude."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why, papa wishes me to have everything I want. He would be terribly worried if he thought I had to do without a single shoe button!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But must all the shoe buttons be of gold?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm papa's only heir--the money is all mine, anyway, and it always has been. You know how simple papa's tastes are."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Like my own--like those of all busy people who are doing things. We haven't time to pamper ourselves."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Someone has to buy up the trash! And you ought to thank us rich darlings of the gods for existing at all--we make you look so respectable by contrast."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But this place isn't the home of an American man and his wife. It's a show place--bought with your father's money! And I've failed. I'm not supporting my wife. Good heavens, if I were I'd have to be cracking safes every week-end to do it. I can't make any more money than I am making--and stay at large--and you cannot go on living off your father and being my wife. I won't have it! I won't be that kind of a failure!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "What shall I do with the money, throw it to the birds?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Wait until it is yours and then spend it on something for the good--not the delight--of someone else, or of a great many other people. Be my wife--let me take care of you,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I couldn't, was her final answer."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I couldn't manage with the allowance you give me--don't worry, dearest, there's no reason at all that we shouldn't have as good a time as there is. Papa wants us to."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't you see what I'm trying to get at? he insisted."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Won't you try to see? Just try--put yourself in my place, make yourself think with my viewpoint as a starting place. Suppose you had been a dreamer of a boy with a pirate's daring and a poet's unreal delusions, and you combined the two to produce a fortune, a fortune everyone marvelled at, the lucky turn of the wheel. Suppose you used that fortune with the same daring and fancy, loving someone with all your heart, to make money in a regular business and under the guidance of a well-trained merchant like your father--and then you married the person you loved and saw her deliberately belittle your manhood by going to her father's house to live, spending her father's money, and leaving you quite alone and without the joyous and needed responsibility of supporting your wife. Now what would you do?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'd start right in spending my own money for things I wanted,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But suppose you did not want things--cluttery, everlasting things, glaring, upholstered, painted, carved, what not--lugged from the four corners of the earth, not harmonizing with your own aims or interests? Suppose you wanted to create an individual and representative home and take care of it and the guardian angel who presided therein--then what would you do?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh--you mean you want another style of house? Then let's buy a country tract--and I promise to let you build and furnish just as you wish. That's a bully idea, dear, to have an abrupt contrast to this house--old-English manor type would be wonderful!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Nothing is really hurt, but they always mess things up, Steve said, coming to the doorway to hold up a precious record book."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "See this? I wonder why they always leave such a lot of stuff to clear away. Now the whole extent of damage is the destroying of that rickety side stairway that is never used and could have been done away with long ago. Some boys, playing craps and smoking, left the makings of the fire and before it touched these rooms there was water poured into the whole plant. As a consequence, we have a three-day vacation and instead of having the side stairs torn down I'm in line for a chunk of insurance."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Even the tea isn't spilled from my caddy, Mary answered;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Look."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Wonder what they used this side stairway for? It was rickety when I bought the place."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't know,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "They've shoved this cabinet over as if they had a special antagonism to it, he was saying, righting a small piece of furniture containing mostly Mary's papers."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There--not hurt, is it? Do the drawers open?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What's in this one--it blocks the spring?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Something wedged right at the edge. I'm sure I don't see what it can be. I never used that drawer for anything but----"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I suppose that's as bad an omen as to break a mirror under a ladder on Friday the thirteenth. Now shall I have the men sweep the office out? There is no reason we cannot get to work to-morrow."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Wait a moment about sweeping out offices and going to work, Steve insisted."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If you want to break the hoodoo you have just brought on yourself by smashing up wedding cake--let me talk and act as high priest."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You promised, and you've been true-blue--don't spoil it. Besides, it can do no good."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I want to ask a question, he insisted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm not going to break faith with you or take advantage of knowing what you told me. I shall always try to appreciate the honour done me, no matter if I am unworthy. I want to ask a question in as impersonal a way as if I wrote in to a woman's column."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ask away."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why is it that a man can honestly be in love with the woman he marries and yet in an amazingly short time find himself playing the cad in feeling disappointed, discontented, utterly lacking affection? It's a ghastly happening. Why is it he saw no handwriting on the wall? I am not stupid, Mary, neither am I given to inconstancy--I've had to struggle too much not to have my mind made up once and for all time. Why didn't I see through this veneer of a good time that these Gorgeous Girls manage to have painted over their real selves? Why did I never suspect? And what is a man to do when he discovers the disillusionment? You see it all, there's no sense in not admitting it--why do I find myself ill at ease, now tense, now irritable over trifles, now sulky, despondent--as plainly sulky and despondent as a wild animal successfully caged and labelled, which must perforce stay put yet which will not afford its spectators the satisfaction of walking wistfully from cage corner to cage corner and yowling in unanswered anguish!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is it as bad as that?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I sometimes feel the way the monkish fraternity did at Oxford when they claimed 'they banished God and admitted women.' I want a man-made world, womanless, without a single trace of romance or a good time. Not right, is it? Sometimes I think I'll crack under the pretense, go raving mad and scream out the whole miserable sham under which I live--and every time I indulge myself in such a reverie I find myself writing Beatrice an extra check and going with her to this thing or that, steel-hammer pulses beating at my forehead and a languor about even the attempt at breathing."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I like this fire, this debris. Most people would curse at it--it's real and rather common, sort of plain boiled-dinner variety. It gives me an excuse to take time off from the eternal frolic. I'm glad when there's a strike or a row and I dig out of town to stay in a commercial hotel. I have to get away from the whole tinsel show. And yet it was what I wanted, was willing to play modern Faust to any Wall Street Mephistopheles----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And you are sure it wasn't a Mephistopheles?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course not--for that much I can draw a deep breath and give thanks--it was my own luck."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Other times, other titles,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "One time you told me what you thought of the future of American women, the all-round good fellows of the world--do you remember? I wish you had not told me. It's just another thing to irritate. I'm driven mad by trifles--I'm starved for a big tragedy; that's the way this craving for a fortune and a good time is playing boomerang. I'm so infernally weary of hearing about the cut-glass slipper heels of some chorus girl and so hungry to hear about a shipwreck, a new creed, a daring crime that----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You foolish, funny boy, she said, taking pity on his involved analysis,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You say it rather neatly; but that isn't all. The thing is that I'm not game enough to go on and take the punishment. Are you surprised?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No. But are you prepared to give up the thing which won her?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "My money? I've thought of it. He folded his arms and began walking up and down the littered, water-soaked office."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Would you like me any better?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If the men go to work at once we can have the rugs sent to the cleaner's and put down old matting for a temporary covering--and I can go ahead taking inventory,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I see, Steve made himself respond."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well--I didn't trespass very much,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I hate you and am only waiting to prove it but meanwhile I'll play off the friend lizard no matter how painful."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I hate this decorating business, Steve said in final condemnation."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I agree with my father-in-law that when a man approaches me with a book of sample braids and cretonnes under his arm I feel it only righteous that he be shot at sunrise--and now you know how strong you stand with me. I don't mind Beatrice having her whirl at the thing. A new colour scheme as often as she has a manicure; that's different. But my office stays as I wish it and you can't rush in any globes of goldfish and inkstands composed of reclining young females with their little hands forming the ink cup, while a single spray of cherry blossoms flourishes over the hook I hang my hat and coat upon. Oh, no, trot back to your boudoirs and purr your prettiest, but stop trying to tackle real men."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She is going to make you a present of it--your birthday gift, I understand. Does that alter the case?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tell her to build a bomb-proof pergola for herself and mark it for me just the same. When we redecorate round here it takes Miss Faithful about a half hour to plan the show. Good-bye, Gay, I'm awfully rushed. Thanks just as much."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gad, that's good!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How cold-hearted it sounds--a long siege!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But it is true. He will not die--he will live until that splendid vitality of his has been snuffed out by a careless law of rhythm, so you may as well buck up and run in to see him every day and then go about as usual."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A sick room drives me wild. I wish I had taken a course in practical nursing instead of the domestic-science things."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I can't bear to think of it. It's like having life-in-death in the very house. Oh, Steve, can't you talk him into going to a sanitarium? They'd have so many interesting kinds of baths to try!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He won't mind your parties, if that is what is bothering you. The only thing he asks is to be left in peace in his room with plenty of detective stories and plenty of medical attention, and he won't know if you dance the roof off. But if you really want to hasten the end send Gay up there with plans for remodelling his room--it will either kill or cure,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I must do something to help me forget and make it easier for him, she said, soberly."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm going to try a faith healer--not because I believe in them but because I don't want to leave any stone unturned. I think a new interest would help papa. Would you try adopting a child or my taking up classical dancing in deadly earnest?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, I'd take up classical dancing,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, it's what I really think would be the best. I will dance on the lawn so papa can watch me."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gad!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What do you want with a diamond? You know I'm always on the ragged edge of failing!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because you gamble and drink and are a born fool, she protested."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You could make real money if you would listen to me and keep quiet."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I can't see what that has to do with your wanting a diamond ring! If I ever make real money you can have one but not when auto tires are as high as they are----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And when husbands grow tipsy and drive into ditches and have to be brought home by horses and wagons. Oh, no. But you'll go shopping with Beatrice and pick out her jewellery and tell her jewels have souls and a lot more bunk, and then get a commission as soon as her back is turned! Why don't you get me a diamond instead, and omit the bunk? I'll take one with a flaw--I'm used to seconds. You must believe me when I say that, because I married you."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'll buy you a diamond ring, old dear, he said, lightly,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You make me so tired I wonder why I don't clear out, she retorted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You think I'm afraid to buy a diamond ring and charge it to you? Watch me!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Just try it and see what will happen."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I will, kind sir."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It seems so good to come back here,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ah--I suppose,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You are such a busy man; you don't know how I admire you."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Um--have you seen the morning papers?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thank you but Gay read them to me at breakfast.... You never come to our little home, do you? Too busy, I presume. Or are you one of those who can forgive everyone but the interior decorator?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm afraid so, Mrs. Vondeplosshe. I leave such things to Beatrice."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, I understand. Trudy took her cue quickly."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It is out of your province. You can't do big, gigantic things if you bother with doll-house notions. Now I really prefer--oh, far prefer--men like yourself, who----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't you ever long for camping trips or long horseback rides--something away from the everlasting fuss and feathers? I do. Would you believe it?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Mary is a wonderful girl, isn't she? Of course you have a Gorgeous Girl, too--but she is for playtime. I should think it would mean a great deal to have Mary for your chief confidante--she is so good, and yet human and----"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How is dear old Mr. Constantine?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The same."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Poor dear. So hard for Bea, too. She says she will not do much this season. She feels if--if it should not be much longer, you understand --a lowered tone of voice and a sigh--"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She would even marry him if she could dispose of Gay,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, Trudy! Run home--your house is on fire! Your cretonnes will burn! she said, half in earnest."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "My dear child, I'm mighty busy. It is so stupid of Parker! She turned to Steve."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He made the original error and I have to keep cross-examining everyone else to prove to him that I know he is at fault and that he must 'fess up. But he won't--people never want to say: 'Yes, it is my fault and I'm sorry,' do they?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sort of habit since the Garden of Eden, I guess--you can't expect it to change now."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "No, Bubseley; sell it and let us use the money to start a fund for heating the huts of aged and infirm Eskimos. The Salvation Army has never dropped up that way."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm going to bundle you off, Mary informed her."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I really must--or was it anything special?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course--just let me know when."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh --archly--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Sometimes. French lessons; theatre; general odd jobs."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No particular caller?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "No,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought perhaps--you know, one time I came in and----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You came one time and found Mr. O'Valley, Mary hastened to add."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, I remember, but that was an unusual occurrence. He came in on business and when he discovered I did not object to a pipe--he stayed."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did Beatrice ever know?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't know myself. Mary was determined to win out."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I can't see why she should--it would not interest her. She never listens to things that do not interest her.... You won't know Luke. He grows like a weed."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I say, old dear, he began,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Where--where did you get it?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Beatrice really--the result of the raffle for the children's charity. You remember we took tickets? She donated this scarfpin, and this morning Jill Briggs came in and presented the trophy. My number was the winning one: 56."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She made you win it. You know she did, you toadying little abomination! You fairly lick her boots--and she has to tip you occasionally. And you sit there wearing that pin and never offering to have it set in a pin for me. You dare to keep it--you dare?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "How low! he chattered."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How d-disgustingly low----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Is it? I'll show you--I'll show you whether or not you can wear diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a washwoman's!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "in the family. It was something so new to plan for and talk about, such a valid excuse if she did not wish to accept invitations, and an excellent reason for runaway trips to Atlantic City or New York"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What can I do for Mrs. O'Valley?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I came in to say hello. I've neglected you lately. But you have been so horrid about not coming to see my gardens that you deserve to be neglected. Her dove-coloured eyes watched Mary closely."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Besides, I want to get something for Mr. O'Valley's desk--as a surprise. You must help me because, as I have realized, you know so much more about him than I do.... There, am I not generous?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Very."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What do you suggest? I'm such a frivolous person my husband never tells me his affairs or wishes. The rugs might be in rags and he would never ask me to replenish. I understand now so much more clearly than ever before why business men and women are prone to fall in love with each other; they see each other so constantly under tests of each one's abilities. They have to ask each other favours and grant them. Sometimes it is a loan of a pencil sharpener, more often it must be the aid of the other fellow's brain to help solve a problem. And they are so shut away from my world. I'm just the pretty mischief-maker who squanders the dollars, and by and by, when self-pity sets in, they find there is a mutual bond of admiration and sympathy. Quite a step toward love, isn't it? As I came in here to-day I could not help thinking of how beautifully you keep business house for my husband. Why, Mary Faithful, aren't you afraid I am going to be jealous?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm afraid you have been reading novels--the ones where the business woman grows paler and more interesting looking each day and somehow happens to be wearing a tempting little chiffon frock when the firm fails and the young and handsome junior partner takes refuge in her office and proceeds to brandish a gun and say farewell to the world. You see, you don't come down to play with us enough to know what prosaic rows there are over pencil sharpeners or who has spirited away the drinking cup or why the window must be six inches from the top because So-and-so has muscular rheumatism. I don't think you are fair, Mrs. O'Valley, and I'm going to risk being quite unpopular by telling you that you have no right to say such things even in jest."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "No, I don't think you do realize. Or to run errands icy-cold days, down slushy streets or slippery hills? To carry great bundles of such daintiness as you are wearing and leave them at the doors of big houses such as your own, numbed, hungry, envious--and not understanding the wherefore of it? To catch glimpses of warm halls, the sound of a piano playing in a flower-scented salon, to see girls your own age in dainty silk dresses sitting in the window and looking at you curiously as you go down the steps? Oh, I could tell you a great deal more, Mrs. O'Valley."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "All this time the handsome junior partners and so on for whom we keep business house and through propinquity are supposed to love--they have fallen in love with sheltered girls such as your own self, and everything is quite as it ought to be. Now do you really think the capable business women of to-day are letting their abilities be spent in useless rebellion against their fate and loving the members of the firm in Victorian fashion or doing their work intelligently and earning their wage? I hardly think there is room for an argument. You must understand that the years of errand girl, night school, underpaid clerk have taken out of us a certain capacity for enjoyment which you women have had emphasized. But thank God it has also taken from us a capacity for hysterical suffering, for going on the rocks when we see some joy we crave yet know can never be ours!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh! Beatrice murmured, wishing Steve would come in or else Mary be called to the telephone."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But I do think there is a certain justice developed among modern business women which home women do not comprehend as a rule. Oh, not that I underestimate the home women or the sheltered women. There is a distinction between the two--but I say that the business woman who earns a man's wage and does his work has a certain squareness, for want of a better term, which makes her say, 'If I earn something it is mine and I shall not hesitate thus to label it. Look out--any one who tries to take it from me!' Do you see?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So you think you would fight for something to which you felt entitled?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Perhaps. The gray eyes had a warrior's strength in them."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fight, win it, and then spend no time in sentimental regrets. We learn one thing that all women should learn in this great age of selection: That you must earn the things you win, and that if you do so you will most likely keep them."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And if you felt that you had earned something--and another woman had not--you would play off the conqueror and take the spoils?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If I felt it the right thing to do."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Deary, I've been too extravagant,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'd be mighty glad if you felt you could live more simply."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You duck! Just what I'm about to do. I'm going to be the loveliest Queen Calico you ever did see--I've no doubt but what I'll be making you a beefsteak pudding before long."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Who will take this castle of gloom from under us?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Then there is the servant question. Now cook is seventy-five dollars a month; the three maids are fifty each, besides all they steal and waste; the laundress and her helper, the chauffeur and all the garden men; the food, light, heat--to say nothing of extra expenses; my parties and trips and the enormous bills for taxes and upkeep that papa pays--I'm afraid to say how much it comes to each month. But it is going to stop! Then my clothes--I'm just ashamed to think--while you, poor dear, exist on nothing----Oh, thank you, Elsie."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I didn't want to come downstairs, so I sent for some lunch. She watched Steve's amused expression."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Aunt Belle gets on my nerves and unless we are having people in, the room is too big to have a family meal."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, Steve ventured, looking at the tray,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm afraid I don't agree----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I know your ideas. You think I ought to be frying chops for you and giving praise because I have a nineteen-dollar near-taffeta dress. I can just see you walking round a two-by-four back yard measuring the corn and putting the watermelons into eiderdown sleeping bags so they won't freeze; then telling everyone at the shop what an ideal home life you lead! No, deary, I'm retrenching because it's a novelty, and you would like to retrench----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because I may be forced to do so. I hate to worry you--I never mean to unless there is no other way out--but I must warn you that the abnormal war conditions are no longer inflating business and everyone is watching his step. I cannot take your father's place; he carved it out step by step. I fairly aeroplaned to the top and found that while I was sitting there in fancied security other people were busy chopping down the steps and I should find myself having a great old fall down to earth. Now----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don't tell any more things, she murmured, deep in a fruit tart."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I can't understand. You are a big, strong man. Go keep your fortune; let me play. I'll retrench for fun, and you must love me for it."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But you are not sincere, he protested."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You don't earn anything. You don't save anything----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So you believe that, too,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "See here, Steve added, in desperation."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I wish we were back in the apartment--or a simple house. I wish we kept a cook and a maid and you had a simple outfit of clothes and a simple routine. I wish we were just folks--you know the sort--you don't find them any place else but America--it's a tremendous chance to be just folks if you would only realize. I feel as if this were a soap-bubble castle, as if we were deliberately playing a wrong game all round."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You tell papa, she begged;"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Then the retrenching is to be the elimination of the fifteen-dollar-a-week professional reader, who needs the work and earns the money, and two courses from our already aldermanic meals? What else?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I shall send the silver to the bank and use plate. The smartest people do that. I shall make aunty embroider my monograms; she can as well as not--the last were frightfully expensive. I'm going to bargain sales after this, and take cook and drive out to the Polish market. Why, things are two and three cents a pound cheaper----"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "All right, darling, he said, glibly, feeling that Gorgeous Girls were get-rich-quick men's albatrosses,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You are not going, he began, angrily."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'm damned if you do!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, my dear, my own dear, she murmured within. Outwardly she shook her head briskly and added,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, I am. The hours--the salary----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The deuce take that stuff! How much more money do you want me to pay you? How few hours a day will you consent to work? You know so well it has been you who have done your own slave driving. Besides, I can't get on without you."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You must; I haven't the right to stay."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You mean because of what I said--that time?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Partly; partly because I find myself disapproving of your transactions."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "They are a safe gamble,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are they? I doubt it. Don't ask me to stay. I want to remain poised and content. If I cannot be radiantly happy I can be content, the sort of old-lavender-and-star-dust peace that used to be mine."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Have I ever said things, made you feel or do----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, no. As she looked at him the gray eyes turned wistful purple."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But it is what we may say or do, Mister Penny Wise."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "So you are going over to staid graybeards who deal in cotton and woollens, and play commercial nun to the end--is that it?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And you do care?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, I don't care about fool laws--they are mighty thin stuff. I love you,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why don't you say something? Abuse me, claim me----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I haven't the courage even if I have the right, she said, presently."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Besides, the last year I have been loving an ideal--the Steve O'Valley who existed one time and might still exist if other things were equal. But in reality you are a prematurely nerve-shattered, blundering pirate; not my Steve. She spoke his name softly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The failure of my ideal--and it's a little hard to live with and work with such a failure. My hands are tied, yet my eyes see. Besides, there is Luke to think about and care for until some other woman does it. I cannot endure this tangle; neither can I get you out of it. So I am going away. And I'll keep on loving my ideal and find the old-lavender-and-star-dust sort of peace."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You are not going! he repeated, sharply, taking her hand."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Do you hear? I love you. I have loved you enough to keep silent about it ever since that day. Does it mean nothing to you?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But when you have a ready-made stock-market fortune handed to you, and a Gorgeous Girl wife, and the world comes to fawn upon you--you soon become intoxicated with a false sense of your own achievements and values. It does not last--nor does it pay. Such joy periods are merely recuperative periods. By and by something comes along and bumps into you and you are shoved out into the struggling seas--the learning and conquering game. It is not a sad state of affairs--but a mighty wise one. Then how can you, who have never earned, expect a joy to be yours forever?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You have struggled and earned. You have the right to love me!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Perhaps--but you cannot hide behind my skirts and claim the same right. I shall give you up. Why, this is no tragedy--it is the way many commercial nuns find their lives are cast. Commercial nuns, like their religious sisters, serve a novitiate--their vocation being tested out. We who find that the things of our fancy are husks leave them behind and go on in our abilities. We are needed women to-day; we must have recognition and respect. We possess a certain unwomanly honesty according to old standards, which makes us say such things as I have said to you. I love you, the ideal of you; yet I am hopeless to realize it. I refuse to keep on making my petty moan for sympathy when all the time the bigger part of me demands work and contentment--and things just like Gorgeous Girls."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But there must be a way out. I can't lose you. Do you know what it will mean?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I fancy I do."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are you pushing me out of a stagnant joy pool?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Perhaps I'm heading that way when I stop serving you before all else."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Mary, Mary, quite contrary --he gave her a gentle little shake--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eternal masculine! That we love to be beaten, cry loudly, tell our neighbours, but we must prove our affections by crawling back to have you kiss the bruises. She shook her head."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You cannot believe that the world recognizes a difference between women with sentiments and sentimental women! Why, my boy, do you know that convictions, real convictions, do make a convict of a man, put a mental ball and chain on him which he can never deny? I have told you my convictions--I am convinced I should be doing wrong to both of us to stay. I shall go--and love my ideal and spend my salary in soothing things."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm not afraid of a divorce,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Nor I. But should you get one I would not marry you."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Not ever?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Not ever,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I shall go to the Meldrum Brothers on the fifteenth.--M. F."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When you can fool the letter man and the charwoman you have nothing to fear from the secret service."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I can't see why you go,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I can't go running off to Bermuda and Florida like you people can. I am forced to find my recreation in my work--and hides and razors are a queer combination for a woman who really likes gardens and sea bathing. She laughed so genuinely that Beatrice told herself that Trudy was an unpardonable little fool."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I have stayed at the post for some time, and now that I've the chance to change my recreation to fabrics--I'm tempted to try it. I'm sure you do understand--and it is with great regret that I leave the office."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It will make it hard for Mr. O'Valley, Beatrice continued, blandly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Of course I have realized what an unusual man my husband is--his phenomenal rise and all that; and papa has always said he never met any one who was so keen as Steve. I have always tried to be diplomatic in whatever I said to Mr. O'Valley about his business; I never encourage his discussing it at home since it is not fair to ask him to drag it into his playtime. So I can't talk over actual details with you. But I know it will be hard for him and he will have quite a time getting readjusted. He says this Miss Coulson is a nice girl but temperamentally a Jersey cow."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Are you sorry?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No; only you grow accustomed to things. You remember how mother felt about the old house."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I guess they'll miss you a lot."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Everyone's place can be filled, we must never forget that. And I think the change is wise. The new firm seems agreeable."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did Mr. O'Valley give you anything?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The firm gave me the wonderful desk set; you saw it before it was sent to be monogrammed."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, but I mean Mr. O'Valley himself. Luke was quite manly and threatening as he strode along."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Something for a keepsake because you've worked so hard for him."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I can get a construction set for six dollars, Luke was saying."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "That will make the bridge models I told you about last week. I'm going to get one."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, dear, I would,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I spy"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, of course, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "How interesting!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, Mary, Trudy began, coughing and trying to sit up,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I thought you'd never come. Why, I'm not so sick----Gay, go outside and wait for the doctor and the nurse. Just think, I'm going to afford a nurse. Oh, the pain in the chest is something fierce. She had lapsed into her old-time vernacular."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Every bone of me aches and my heart thumps as if it was awful mad at me. I guess it ought to be, Mary. How good it is to have you. Take off your things. Gee, that pain is some pain! Um--I wonder if the doctor can help."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Do you want me to stay all night?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Now, my dear, you must put on a warm dressing gown and something to pad your chest--this nightgown is a farce, she said, sternly, rising."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Where shall I find something? Oh, Trudy--don't!"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "My, but I've been a bluff, she said, tears on the white, shiny cheeks."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gee, but that doctor takes his time, too. I had to beg something great before husband would go for you. He's awful mean, but I always told you he was, and he would have a fine time if I should die, wouldn't he?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You mustn't talk, Mary said."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "That's an order."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'll stay,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rather--have--Mary,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did you see the ring? It's a wonderful stone."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gee, but that ring made a lot of trouble. Mary, come here, deary. Will you forgive me? They say you forgive the dead anything. Listen, I was awfully discouraged and Gay was so mean and I was all wrong, anyway--you know--foolish--see? Beatrice was mean, too.... I want you to marry Steve because he loves you, and a divorce won't break her heart--you just see if it does. I always knew he was the one you liked--and he does care now. Sure, he does. You can tell. Even I can tell, Mary.... I just told her so--and my, she is wild but won't admit it. She never asked me to her house after that if she could get out of it. And now I'm sorry--and I want you to have the ring. That will help some, won't it? You tell Gay what I said. You must have it. Your fingers are thin and long and can carry it off well. And so you do forgive me, don't you? I shouldn't have told her, but I couldn't help it, she was so mean. And now he cares--and you can be happy----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You told Mrs. O'Valley?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I said you always loved her husband and now he loves you--and I am sorry. But I was mad at them all; you can't understand because you're not my sort.... But you can be happy now. Marry him and make him happy."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Perhaps it was all for the best; an idyl of youth, y'know; someone quite out of my sphere,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "None of you ever treats me rightly when I do smile on you; now go take care of yourselves any way you like, for you have ruined me, too."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why gamble so, my dear Stevuns? she began, almost petulantly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And do you know that every time I make engagements for you you are late? You are nearly a half hour late to-night."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I am losing the factory as well. I'll have to sell out for a song. I can't compete with cutthroats----"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are you going to hurry and dress so we can go?"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You don't seem to understand what I am saying, and all that is happening. First I played Arizona copper until they taught me not to monkey with the band wagon; then I played Cobalt until the same thing took place. He sank impolitely into an easy-chair."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Then I got the chance to come in with the gang--an insulting proposition any way you want to figure--a paltry sum for everything I have and the statement in veiled terms that I need not expect to have that unless I did as they dictate."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well--sell your business to someone else before this happens!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I couldn't even if I wished to cheat; it is quite the talk of the town."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well--manage. Papa will tell you how. Why do you come running to me? Goodness, don't stare like that. It's nothing unusual to manage! I don't know about business--you made a lot of money once and I should think you could do it again."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It doesn't bother me as much as you think, he said, almost breathlessly, eager to know the worst."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It means I am a poor man in your estimation. I can sell out to these people, who have thrown a steel ring round their game, so to speak, and had to do it until your father was out of the running. I can never buck them--I'm not fool enough to be goaded on to try. Your father could not win out the way things are now--but he could have prevented their ever getting the upper hand--because he knows every last turn of the wheel. They could not have fooled him. I didn't know what was coming until it was too late. A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Stevuns, you'll make me so nervous I can't go to-night. It's a lovely party. You stay home and tell papa all about it, but leave me in peace."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Thank you, I will. And is this the sympathy and the understanding you give me when I say we are being ruined?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't keep saying it. She stamped her little foot."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Papa has lots of money in English and Chinese securities and I don't know what-all. Why, that factory of his was the least of his fortune."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "That is why your father deliberately lifted three fourths of his money from the business just before he was taken ill. He was not going to risk cutthroats getting together. He overestimated my ability to keep clear of disaster. But after all, I'm not sorry--I don't want anything more than I have earned. For you always pay for it in some way. The world may not know but these snap-judgment profiteers, these get-rich-quick phenomena, always have to pay. But you don't understand, he added, gently,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I shall not try, she said, petulantly,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I didn't take your father's money to marry you with, and even if I stole it in a sense it was my own efforts that brought it to pass. I took no help from him until I was established. And I shall not sneak back to let my wife's father support me now. I'm going to drop out of this game, Beatrice. It is for you to decide whether you go with me or stay at the Villa Rosa."
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You look shabby and tired, she complained;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You mean you won't begin with me, you won't take our one chance for happiness? Just to begin together to learn and earn, be real? Do you think for one instant I will be like Gay Vondeplosshe, subsisting on a woman's bounty? No. I shall support my wife; it was never my wish that we come here to live, and you insisted upon luxuries my purse could not afford. In the main, to the outsider, I have supported you. But we both know it is not true; I have merely been a needful accessory. From now on I shall either support you or else not live with you. I ask you to stop having a good time long enough to give me your decision."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh, Stevuns--you funny old brutish dear!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If it were a direct loan of money from your father it would be a different matter--but it is one of those intricate, involved deals that mean more than you or I choose to admit. It means that I have learned the hollow satisfaction in being a rich man and husband of a Gorgeous Girl. I want to be a plain American with a wife who is content with something else save a Villa Rosa and pound-and-a-half lap dogs. I am going to be a mediocre failure in the eyes of your set, since it is the only way in which I can start to be a true success in other than dollar standards. The two elements that collect a crowd and breed newspaper headlines are mystery and struggle; remove them and you find yourself serene and secure. That is what I propose to do. I ask if it is too late for you to come with me or are you going to linger in the Villa Rosa? Answer me--I want something real, common, definite--can't you understand?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If you ever dare treat me like this again----"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why, Steve, he said in a pleased tone,"
}
]
|
29753 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The dogs! I knew it! Why didn't you tell me long before? Blocked 'em off--snuffed 'em out. Meddling with wildcat stocks--asinine any way you figure it! Well, I don't know that I blame you. The first success was too sweet to leave untried again, eh? He chuckled as if something amused him."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "We'll close out to 'em. We'll start again----"
}
]
|
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