Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
Both of these ladies, as Amory had assured Mr. Brimby, were "quite all
right." She meant socially. No such difference was to be found between
them in this respect as that which yawned between Mr. Brimby and Mr.
Wilkinson. Indeed as far as Dickie was concerned, Amory had given a
little apologetic laugh at the idea of her having to place and appraise
a Lemesurier of Bath at all. The two girls had equally to work for their
living, and--but perhaps it was here that the difference came in. There
are jobs and jobs. It was a question of tone. Dickie, running the
Suffrage Book Shop, enjoyed something of the glamour of Letters; but
Katie, as manageress of the Eden Restaurant, was, after all, only a
caterer. It was not Amory's fault that Romance had pronounced
arbitrarily and a little harshly on the relative dignity of these
occupations. She could not help it that books are books and superior,
while baked beans are only baked beans, necessary, but not to be talked
about. If Dickie had, by her calling, a shade more consideration than
was strictly her due, while Katie, by hers, was slightly shorn of
something to which she would otherwise have been entitled, well, it was
not Amory who had arranged it so.
But between books and baked beans the twins did not hesitate for an
instant. They saw from no point of view but their unromantic own.
Dickie, overhauling the remainder stock at the Suffrage Shop, was able
to bring them a book from time to time; but Katie, whose days were spent
in a really interesting place full of things to eat, brought them
sweetened Proteids, and cold roasted chestnuts, and sugared Filbertine,
and sometimes a pot of the Eden Non-Neuritic Honey for tea. And because
the flesh was stronger in them than Amory thought it ought to be (at any
rate until the day should come when they must leave the tribe with a
copy of "Leaves of Grass" in their hands), they adored Katie and thought
very much less of Dickie.
Now this belly-guided preference was a thing to be checked in them; and
one day Amory had asked Katie (quite nicely and gently) whether she
would mind _not_ bringing the children things that spoiled their
appetites, not to speak of their tempers when they clamoured for these
comestibles at times when they were not to be had. Then, one afternoon
in the nursery, Amory actually had to repeat her request. Half an hour
later, when the children had been brought down into the studio for their
after-tea hour, she learned that Katie had left the house. It was Corin
himself who informed her of this.
"Auntie Katie was crying," he said. "About the vertisements," he added.
"_Ad_-vertisements, dear," Amory corrected him. "Say _ad_-vertisements,
not vertisements."
"_Ad_-vertisements," said Corin sulkily. "But--" and he cheered up
again, "--she _was_, mother."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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