"Oh, mamma, I just hate that circle! I wish to goodness you would let me resign." "I have a grateful daughter, I have. Any other child with your advantages would think she had heaven on earth." "I hate it, I tell you. Flora and Snow and all those girls, with nothing on their brains except fellows and fancy work, make me positively sick." "I notice Flora had enough brains to become engaged to a fine young fellow with prospects like Vincent Bankhead." "Every time I sit down at that circle I think I'm going to scream. I just can't rake up enthusiasm over French knots. Something in me begins to suffocate and I can't get out from under. I hate it." Regarding her daughter through the bluish aroma of bacon in the frying, her early-morning coiffure and wrapper not lenient with her, a bitterness pulled at the lips of Mrs. Becker. "That settles it. I'm going to have a talk with your father this morning." "Oh, mamma, please don't begin a scene!" "Ben, are you ready for breakfast? Come down. What do you do up there so long? You've been one solid hour splashing around the bathroom, as if I didn't have to get down on my hands and knees to wipe up the flood around the bathtub. Hurry! Your daughter has something to say to you." "Coming, Carrie. Don't get excited." "Don't get excited! I think your father would ram that down my throat if this house was tumbling around our heads." It was true that Mr. Becker's imperturbability incased him like a kindly coating of tallow. His daily and peremptory call to breakfast brought him down only after the last satisfactory application of whisk, tooth, hand, shoe, bath, and hair brush, his invariable white-linen string tie adjusted to a nicety, his neat gray business suit buttoned over a gradual embonpoint. "If I took as good care of myself as my husband does, I'd live to be a thousand." "Now, little woman, you got up on the wrong side of bed to-day." On this particular morning he descended genial, rubbing cold, soap-exuding hands together. "Well, little woman! Good morning, daughter." "Ben, I'm at my row's end with Lilly. Something has got to be done or I can't stand it." He sat down, an immediate tiredness out in his face, adjusting his napkin by the patent fasteners to each coat lapel. "Now, Carrie, have you and Lilly been quarreling again? Doesn't it seem too bad, Lilly, that you and your mother cannot get on without these disturbances? Your mother may have her peculiarities, but she means well." A ready wave of red self-commiseration dashed itself across Mrs. Becker's face. "I can't stand it, Ben. I don't know what she wants. Maybe you can please her. I can't. Everything I do is wrong. Everything."