discovered eating all the provisions, Gina won't ask me again." Arthur carried her plate into a small breakfast room adjoining, and sat on the arm of a chair opposite her.
This is just dumb luck, Mysie thought; I mustn't keep him long, but while the music goes on, he won't be missed. And I can diplomatically prepare him for Jake. "There would be no social unrest," she said, "if the poor were supplied with champagne and pâté de foie gras. Instead of being investigated and surveyed at great expense by a lot of ghastly sociologists and uplifters, who then inform them that they are poor. They know it. I'm glad I was a barefoot child in the backwoods."
"Aren't you from the same town as Gina?" Arthur looked amused but puzzled.
"It's a town, but all inland is wilderness, slashings. But Gina wasn't a barefoot child; she was always a little lady," Mysie qualified. He can't imagine being poor, she thought. Absolutely nothing to go by. A nursery, and estate grounds to play in, and always walls around everything. So when he thinks he comes to a wall in his mind. That's worse than being poor—even the slattern poverty Mysie had known and hated. She had really hated it, from her first consciousness, because of her stepfather. Her mother had to carry the burden, a tired woman with the weight of a large family in a small house on her slender shoulders. Mysie didn't exactly hate her stepfather; she despised him too thoroughly for that. An able-bodied shiftless man who wouldn't hold a steady job even when it could be had; he sat on a tipped chair on the rickety porch in fine weather, and by the kitchen stove in bad weather, whittling little wooden boats and complaining of lumbago, the government, and his luck in having been born too late for opportunity. He was simply useless. There is that fact which sentimental sociologists do not take into account; some people are useless. It doesn't matter whether they sit in club windows and turn purple over the insolence of workingmen demanding higher wages, or sit in the kitchen grumbling about the injustices of capitalism; they are a dead loss. What are you going to do with them? They are more useless in a job than out of it. They have to be carried. I don't mind you riding your end of the cross-cut saw, but will you kindly not let your feet drag. . . . Mysie used to wish disinterestedly that her stepfather would die. He wouldn't, of course. He would never die. His kind are notably long-lived, since they do not deplete their energies by excessive toil or mental exertion. Since for years Mysie had sent money to her mother, his lumbago had become chronic.
It was grimly humorous to be thinking of him here, opposite Arthur Siddall in this Louis XIV breakfast room, with a Wedgwood plate of pâté de foie gras and thin gold-etched wine-glasses on the table between them.
9
I SUPPOSE Arthur is useless too, Mysie thought, but at least he is ornamental. His white waistcoat alone is worth the upkeep. "There's something I want to ask you," she said. "A favor."
"What is it? I'd be delighted," Arthur said rashly.
When he turns his head, Mysie thought, you see pure light on it, like water flowing over a smooth surface. One hundred per cent blond. It's fascinating. She gazed at him with complete esthetic detachment; and Arthur thought she had lovely eyes. And the dent in her upper lip, her ear and the line of her cheek. . . . "Yes," she said mischievously, "we do. But we aren't."
"Do what?" he echoed, taken aback.
Mysie said: "Georgie—I mean Gina—and Geraldine and I do look a bit alike, a family resemblance. I can guess when anyone begins to notice it, sort of a haven't I seen you before expression. But we're completely different." Geraldine, she thought, has a surprising resistance under her quiet manner; Gina is as hard as nails, and I'm tough.
"Did you call her Georgie?"
"When she was a little girl. Don't tell her I told you; she never liked her name, Georgina." Not after she learned about
This is just dumb luck, Mysie thought; I mustn't keep him long, but while the music goes on, he won't be missed. And I can diplomatically prepare him for Jake. "There would be no social unrest," she said, "if the poor were supplied with champagne and pâté de foie gras. Instead of being investigated and surveyed at great expense by a lot of ghastly sociologists and uplifters, who then inform them that they are poor. They know it. I'm glad I was a barefoot child in the backwoods."
"Aren't you from the same town as Gina?" Arthur looked amused but puzzled.
"It's a town, but all inland is wilderness, slashings. But Gina wasn't a barefoot child; she was always a little lady," Mysie qualified. He can't imagine being poor, she thought. Absolutely nothing to go by. A nursery, and estate grounds to play in, and always walls around everything. So when he thinks he comes to a wall in his mind. That's worse than being poor—even the slattern poverty Mysie had known and hated. She had really hated it, from her first consciousness, because of her stepfather. Her mother had to carry the burden, a tired woman with the weight of a large family in a small house on her slender shoulders. Mysie didn't exactly hate her stepfather; she despised him too thoroughly for that. An able-bodied shiftless man who wouldn't hold a steady job even when it could be had; he sat on a tipped chair on the rickety porch in fine weather, and by the kitchen stove in bad weather, whittling little wooden boats and complaining of lumbago, the government, and his luck in having been born too late for opportunity. He was simply useless. There is that fact which sentimental sociologists do not take into account; some people are useless. It doesn't matter whether they sit in club windows and turn purple over the insolence of workingmen demanding higher wages, or sit in the kitchen grumbling about the injustices of capitalism; they are a dead loss. What are you going to do with them? They are more useless in a job than out of it. They have to be carried. I don't mind you riding your end of the cross-cut saw, but will you kindly not let your feet drag. . . . Mysie used to wish disinterestedly that her stepfather would die. He wouldn't, of course. He would never die. His kind are notably long-lived, since they do not deplete their energies by excessive toil or mental exertion. Since for years Mysie had sent money to her mother, his lumbago had become chronic.
It was grimly humorous to be thinking of him here, opposite Arthur Siddall in this Louis XIV breakfast room, with a Wedgwood plate of pâté de foie gras and thin gold-etched wine-glasses on the table between them.
9
I SUPPOSE Arthur is useless too, Mysie thought, but at least he is ornamental. His white waistcoat alone is worth the upkeep. "There's something I want to ask you," she said. "A favor."
"What is it? I'd be delighted," Arthur said rashly.
When he turns his head, Mysie thought, you see pure light on it, like water flowing over a smooth surface. One hundred per cent blond. It's fascinating. She gazed at him with complete esthetic detachment; and Arthur thought she had lovely eyes. And the dent in her upper lip, her ear and the line of her cheek. . . . "Yes," she said mischievously, "we do. But we aren't."
"Do what?" he echoed, taken aback.
Mysie said: "Georgie—I mean Gina—and Geraldine and I do look a bit alike, a family resemblance. I can guess when anyone begins to notice it, sort of a haven't I seen you before expression. But we're completely different." Geraldine, she thought, has a surprising resistance under her quiet manner; Gina is as hard as nails, and I'm tough.
"Did you call her Georgie?"
"When she was a little girl. Don't tell her I told you; she never liked her name, Georgina." Not after she learned about
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