"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?" "God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Just doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent." "I'm--that way." "We're a lot alike, Carrie. At heart, I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?" "Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--" "I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud of." "Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'" "I knew it!" "But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer-covers off the furniture. You can believe me or not, but half the time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold snack for supper and every one knew what a table we used to set. But with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--" "You poor little woman. I know how it is. Why, if I used to so much as telephone that I couldn't get home for supper right away I knew my little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat enough herself to keep a bird alive." "Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr. Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People think I'm a rich widow and with her father's memory to consider and a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just the same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the start." "It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it." "We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd a jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with conscientiousness." "Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you just said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford for yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Street alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousand last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say yes?" "My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean on her so." "A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her mother's light."