She knew that he was trying to keep her from going, trying to indicate that he was something more than a person to whom one brought trousers for pressing.  He besought: 

“Some day I hope I can get away from this fool repairing, when I have the money saved up.  I want to go East and work for some big dressmaker, and study art drawing, and become a high-class designer.  Or do you think that’s a kind of fiddlin’ ambition for a fellow?  I was brought up on a farm.  And then monkeyin’ round with silks!  I don’t know.  What do you think?  Myrtle Cass says you’re awfully educated.”

“I am.  Awfully.  Tell me:  Have the boys made fun of your ambition?”

She was seventy years old, and sexless, and more advisory than Vida Sherwin.

“Well, they have, at that.  They’ve jollied me a good deal, here and Minneapolis both.  They say dressmaking is ladies’ work. (But I was willing to get drafted for the war!  I tried to get in.  But they rejected me.  But I did try! ) I thought some of working up in a gents’ furnishings store, and I had a chance to travel on the road for a clothing house, but somehow—­I hate this tailoring, but I can’t seem to get enthusiastic about salesmanship.  I keep thinking about a room in gray oatmeal paper with prints in very narrow gold frames—­or would it be better in white enamel paneling?—­but anyway, it looks out on Fifth Avenue, and I’m designing a sumptuous——­” He made it “sump-too-ous”—­“robe of linden green chiffon over cloth of gold!  You know—­tileul.  It’s elegant. . . .  What do you think?”

“Why not?  What do you care for the opinion of city rowdies, or a lot of farm boys?  But you mustn’t, you really mustn’t, let casual strangers like me have a chance to judge you.”

“Well——­You aren’t a stranger, one way.  Myrtle Cass—­Miss Cass, should say—­she’s spoken about you so often.  I wanted to call on you—­and the doctor—­but I didn’t quite have the nerve.  One evening I walked past your house, but you and your husband were talking on the porch, and you looked so chummy and happy I didn’t dare butt in.”

Maternally, “I think it’s extremely nice of you to want to be trained in—­in enunciation by a stage-director.  Perhaps I could help you.  I’m a thoroughly sound and uninspired schoolma’am by instinct; quite hopelessly mature.”

“Oh, you aren’t either!”

She was not very successful at accepting his fervor with the air of amused woman of the world, but she sounded reasonably impersonal:  “Thank you.  Shall we see if we really can get up a new dramatic club?  I’ll tell you:  Come to the house this evening, about eight.  I’ll ask Miss Mullins to come over, and we’ll talk about it.”

VI

“He has absolutely no sense of humor.  Less than Will.  But hasn’t
he-----What is a ‘sense of humor’?  Isn’t the thing he lacks the
back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here?  Anyway——­Poor lamb,
coaxing me to stay and play with him!  Poor lonely lamb!  If he could be
free from Nat Hickses, from people who say ‘dandy’ and ‘bum,’ would he
develop?

“I wonder if Whitman didn’t use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?