a lot of respect for a man who gets a quiet chuckle out of a page of Greek—even though I think I’ll get along better in the world.”
“Herb, you’re an inverted snob—you generalize too much—you hate the rich, you hate people who like to sit and think——”
“I don’t ‘hate.’ I’m just self-sufficient—I don’t need someone else’s money, and I feel I’ve wasted precious years with a college education. I don’t need anything but my own two hands and my common sense.”
“You may think you are contradicting me—but you’re not! Let’s go—can you leave the tip?”
At the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where her father’s fortune had brought forth the best food, the best music, and a magnificent figure “21” formed of Cecil Brunner roses hung from the beak of a carved-in-ice swan, Miss Zoë Appleby was celebrating her birthday. There were beaming parents on the side lines, keeping discreetly out of the young people’s fun.
“He sure made up for it, didn’t he?” whispered a best girl friend to Zoë, after examining the pear-shaped diamond pendant on her friend’s throat.
“Of course, it’s fabulous,” said Zoë, “and I love it, I really do—but it’s really just a bribe. Dad just hated Maurice—said he didn’t believe he was a baron at all. I tried to tell him I didn’t care —that I loved Maurice, that I couldn’t live without him——” Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Come on, darling,” said the best friend, “let’s go over and have some champagne—make you feel better.”
In an old-fashioned hospital laboratory Dr. Lawrence Payne was wishing there were thirty-six hours in a day, so that once in a while he could get eight hours sleep. He would have liked to chuck practice and do nothing but research. But that was the desire of most inquiring men, and the riddle was always, “Where’s the money coming from?” A case had been referred to him that had stumped the experts. He was not quite sure whether to be flattered or not. He had had a few modest successes in his specialty of diagnosing brain injuries and diseases, but he strongly felt that it was a combination of circumstances that had brought Roger Thorne to him. And one of them was the fact that the Thornes were running out of money.
His colleagues said he was unscientific; that he was riding a hobby by continually inquiring as to whether the symptoms of brain damage might not be psychogenic in origin. Especially when any damn fool could see there was an actual history of brain damage. But he was never satisfied, he tried to explain that it might simply be a precipitating factor for the behavior symptoms which followed. The trouble was it took time, time to investigate, to analyze clinically thousands of cases—to dig into reading matter, to keep patients hospitalized and not have to kick them out because the turnover was so great. It needed buildings, and nurses and men and money—and time. But mostly money. Payne wished he had a fairy godmother.
Beatrice Carewe was putting unlovely lines in her face by asking herself unanswerable questions: “Is it because I have been a bad mother in some way?” “Why couldn’t Charlie be like his father?” “What am I going to do if—when—in case——” The only answers she could get had to come out of thin air, and thin air is poor comfort. So she increased her consumption of aspirin and made several phone calls to prevent the possibility of someone asking those same unanswerable questions or, worse, offering the kind of sympathy that concealed disapproval.
“Edie, I’m just not going to have time to act for the committee on our drive, I’m afraid you’ll have to get someone else—maybe Margaret. . . . I know, I know, I promised, but something has come up—Walter’s business—we might have to go to London——”
“Of course, dear, I understand, I’m sure Margaret can handle it.”
And how well did she “understand”? Did she know?
“Herb, you’re an inverted snob—you generalize too much—you hate the rich, you hate people who like to sit and think——”
“I don’t ‘hate.’ I’m just self-sufficient—I don’t need someone else’s money, and I feel I’ve wasted precious years with a college education. I don’t need anything but my own two hands and my common sense.”
“You may think you are contradicting me—but you’re not! Let’s go—can you leave the tip?”
At the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where her father’s fortune had brought forth the best food, the best music, and a magnificent figure “21” formed of Cecil Brunner roses hung from the beak of a carved-in-ice swan, Miss Zoë Appleby was celebrating her birthday. There were beaming parents on the side lines, keeping discreetly out of the young people’s fun.
“He sure made up for it, didn’t he?” whispered a best girl friend to Zoë, after examining the pear-shaped diamond pendant on her friend’s throat.
“Of course, it’s fabulous,” said Zoë, “and I love it, I really do—but it’s really just a bribe. Dad just hated Maurice—said he didn’t believe he was a baron at all. I tried to tell him I didn’t care —that I loved Maurice, that I couldn’t live without him——” Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Come on, darling,” said the best friend, “let’s go over and have some champagne—make you feel better.”
In an old-fashioned hospital laboratory Dr. Lawrence Payne was wishing there were thirty-six hours in a day, so that once in a while he could get eight hours sleep. He would have liked to chuck practice and do nothing but research. But that was the desire of most inquiring men, and the riddle was always, “Where’s the money coming from?” A case had been referred to him that had stumped the experts. He was not quite sure whether to be flattered or not. He had had a few modest successes in his specialty of diagnosing brain injuries and diseases, but he strongly felt that it was a combination of circumstances that had brought Roger Thorne to him. And one of them was the fact that the Thornes were running out of money.
His colleagues said he was unscientific; that he was riding a hobby by continually inquiring as to whether the symptoms of brain damage might not be psychogenic in origin. Especially when any damn fool could see there was an actual history of brain damage. But he was never satisfied, he tried to explain that it might simply be a precipitating factor for the behavior symptoms which followed. The trouble was it took time, time to investigate, to analyze clinically thousands of cases—to dig into reading matter, to keep patients hospitalized and not have to kick them out because the turnover was so great. It needed buildings, and nurses and men and money—and time. But mostly money. Payne wished he had a fairy godmother.
Beatrice Carewe was putting unlovely lines in her face by asking herself unanswerable questions: “Is it because I have been a bad mother in some way?” “Why couldn’t Charlie be like his father?” “What am I going to do if—when—in case——” The only answers she could get had to come out of thin air, and thin air is poor comfort. So she increased her consumption of aspirin and made several phone calls to prevent the possibility of someone asking those same unanswerable questions or, worse, offering the kind of sympathy that concealed disapproval.
“Edie, I’m just not going to have time to act for the committee on our drive, I’m afraid you’ll have to get someone else—maybe Margaret. . . . I know, I know, I promised, but something has come up—Walter’s business—we might have to go to London——”
“Of course, dear, I understand, I’m sure Margaret can handle it.”
And how well did she “understand”? Did she know?
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