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Updated: July 7, 2025
And then, as he loved his own work far more than conversation, Chandler hurried back to his desk. "I understand," said Lanley to Wayne, "that you are here regularly now." "Yes." "Like your work?" Lanley was obviously delaying, hoping that some information would turn up unexpectedly. "Very much." "Humph! What does your mother think about it?" "About my new job?" Wayne smiled.
It was to Wayne he was speaking, when he said: "What does your mother think of it?" "Oh, my mother," answered Pete. "Well, she thinks that if she were a girl she'd like to go to China." Mr. Lanley looked up, and they both smiled with the most perfect understanding. "She would," said the older man, and then he became intensely serious. "It's quite out of the question," he said.
It was a question about which Lanley had been thinking, and he answered: "I mean a person who values himself for qualities that have no moral, financial, or intellectual value whatsoever. You, for instance, Wilsey, value yourself not because you are a pretty good lawyer, but because your great-grandfather signed the Declaration." A shade of slight embarrassment crossed the lawyer's face.
She had supposed she and Mr. Lanley were to dine alone, an idea which had not struck her as revolutionary. Accustomed to strange meals in strange company a bowl of milk with a prison chaplain at a dairy lunch-room, or even, on one occasion, a supper in an Owl Lunch Wagon with a wavering drunkard, she had thought that a quiet, perfect dinner with Mr. Lanley sounded pleasant enough.
The laugh rather shocked Mr. Lanley. He tried to explain. "I feel sorry for you, but you can't imagine how painful it is to us to think that Mathilde came so near to being mixed up with a crooked deal like that Mathilde, of all people. You ought to see that for yourself." "I see it, thank you," said Pete. "Really, Mr. Wayne, I don't think that's quite the tone to take," put in Adelaide.
"It would do you both good." "And leave you alone, Mama?" "It's what I really want, dear." The plan did not fulfil itself quite as Mr. Lanley had imagined. Mrs. Wayne was out at some sort of meeting. They waited a moment for Pete. Mathilde fixed her eyes on the lighted doorway, and said to herself that in a few seconds the thing of all others that she desired would happen he would come through it.
He saw that his absence had given his guests an instant of freer criticism, for they were tucking away smiles as he entered. "A very unusual type, is she not, our friend, Mrs. Wayne?" said Wilsey. "A little bit of a reformer, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Baxter. "Don't be too hard on her," answered Lanley. "Oh, very charming, very charming," put in Wilsey, feeling, perhaps, that Mrs.
"Oh, you have suspected. You had reason to think the whole thing might be dishonest, but you were willing to run away with Mathilde and let her get inextricably committed before you found out " "That's irresponsible, sir," said Lanley. "I don't suppose you understood what you were doing, but it was utterly irresponsible."
Here she decided on an act of some insubordination. She would wear her best dress that evening, the dress which her mother considered too old for her. She did not want Pete's mother to think he had chosen a perfect baby. Mr. Lanley, too, was a trifle nervous during the afternoon. He tried to say to himself that it was because the future of his darling little Mathilde was about to be settled.
Pete felt her interest sweep away from his affairs, and it had not returned when the telephone rang. He came back from answering it to tell his mother that Mr. Lanley, the grandfather of his love, was asking if she would see him for a few minutes that afternoon or evening. A visit was arranged for nine o'clock. "What's he like?" asked Mrs. Wayne, wrinkling her nose and looking very impish.
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