Marriage -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"My dear," she said decisively, "it's not what you say that interests
men; it's how you look and what you have on."
But despite her air of assurance and her own liking of her life, she
felt the picture growing flat, and so she added quietly:
"Oh, my friends aren't all I'd like. They never are, if you've anything
in you. If you really want to be somebody--" and here her whole
expression changed to one of resolute faith in herself--"you need just
one thing, money. And you can't do anything about that, you have to
wait for your husband. Joe's a dear, of course, and he's working hard.
And he's getting it, too, he's getting it!" A gleam of hunger almost
fierce came into her clear violet eyes. "I want a larger
apartment--I've picked out the very one. And I want a car, a limousine.
I know just how I'll paint it a mauve body with white wheels. And I
want a house on Long Island. I've picked out the very spot--just next
to Fanny Carr's new place."
As her sister spoke of these ideals, again Ethel had that feeling of
church, but only for a moment.
"Who's Fanny Carr?" she asked alertly.
Amy was slowly combing her hair, and she smiled with kindly tolerance,
for her little confession had brought back her faith in herself and her
future.
"Fanny was a writer once--"
"Oh, really!"
"Yes. She ran a department on one of the papers." It had been the dress
pattern page, but Amy did not mention that. Instead she yawned
complacently. "Oh, she dropped it quick enough--she thought it rather
tiresome. She's one of the cleverest women I know. She'd have got a
long way up in the world, if it weren't for her second husband--"
"Her second?"
"Yes. The first one didn't do very well. She told me once, 'If you
want to get on, change your name at least once in every three years.'
Her second, as it happened, was no better than the first. But she was
clever enough by then to get an able lawyer; and when it came to the
divorce, Fanny succeeded in keeping the house, the one out on Long
Island."
"Oh," said Ethel tensely. Her sister shot a look at her.
"I don't care especially for Fanny's ideas about husbands," she said.
"But at least she has a love of a home." And Amy went on to explain to
her sister the value and importance of being able to give "week ends."
Again the gleam came into her eyes.
"It's money, my dear, it's money. They are the same women in Newport
exactly--just like all the rest of us--only they are richer. That's
all--but it is everything. Put me in a big house out there, and my
friends wouldn't know me in a few years."
A cloud came on her face as she looked in the glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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