“I don’t wonder you wrote it,” said Hardy, when he met her for lunch.
“Joe, it’s the only way!”
“It’s not _my_ way,” said he.
She reminded him that he had promised her to do whatever she wanted, and
he replied that he would do so--except in this instance.
“Well, I won’t let you have the burden of taking care of Aunt Bessie,”
she told him. “It’s bad enough for you to think of getting married,
anyhow, when you’re so young, and just at the beginning of a wonderful
career--”
“Young, am I? Then what about you?” he asked. “No! When you marry me,
you’ll be done with offices. That’s something I won’t argue about.”
She pretended to be angry, but in her heart she adored him when he was
magnificent and arbitrary.