The Professor s House
your airy atelier, as many as you wish—I’m said to
be rich now, am I not?—Go buy, but you can’t have
my women. That’s final.”
Augusta looked down her nose as she did at church when the dark sins were mentioned. “Professor,” she said severely, “I think this time you are carrying a joke too far. You never used to.” From the tilt of her chin he saw that she felt the presence of some improper suggestion.
“No matter what you think, you can’t have them.” They considered, both were in earnest now. Augusta was first to break the defiant silence.
“I suppose I am to be allowed to take my patterns?”
“Your patterns? Oh, yes, the cut-out things you keep in the couch with my old note-books? Certainly, you can have them. Let me lift it for you.” He raised the hinged top of the box-couch that stood against the wall, under the slope of the ceiling. At one end of the upholstered box were piles of notebooks and bundles of manuscript tied up in square packages with mason’s cord. At the other end were many little rolls of patterns, cut out of newspapers and tied with bits of ribbon, gingham, silk, georgette; notched charts which followed the changing stature and figures of the Misses St. Peter from early childhood to womanhood. In the middle of the box, patterns and manuscripts interpenetrated.
I see we shall have some difficulty in separating
—22—
