I'm
the only man she's ever loved--but she won't have me. What novels
did you read when you were young, dear? I'm convinced it all turns
on that. If she'd been brought up on Trollope and Whyte-Melville,
instead of Tolstoi and Mrs. Ward, we should have now been vulgarly
sitting on a sofa, trying on the engagement-ring."
Mrs. Quentin at first was kept silent by the mother's instinctive
anger that the girl she has not wanted for her son should have dared
to refuse him. Then she said, "Tell me, dear."
"My good woman, she has scruples."
"Scruples?"
"Against the paper. She objects to me in my official capacity as
owner of the _Radiator_."
His mother did not echo his laugh.
"She had found a solution, of course--she overflows with expedients.
I was to chuck the paper, and we were to live happily ever afterward
on canned food and virtue. She even had an alternative ready--women
are so full of resources! I was to turn the _Radiator_ into an
independent organ, and run it at a loss to show the public what a
model newspaper ought to be. On the whole, I think she fancied this
plan more than the other--it commended itself to her as being more
uncomfortable and aggressive. It's not the fashion nowadays to be
good by stealth."
Mrs. Quentin said to herself, "I didn't know how much he cared!"
Aloud she murmured, "You must give her time."
"Time?"
"To move out the old prejudices and make room for new ones."
"My dear mother, those she has are brand-new; that's the trouble
with them.
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