Letty Fox Read Online Free PDF Page B

they did badly, but how dull they look; I can’t stand that lamplight conversation round the family table. There must be something better for me. So I’m browsing! You’ve got to let me. I’ve got to be selfish now in order to be a good wife and mother later on. That’s why I can’t live with you and the girls. Anita’s got her kid and you’ve had three, Mother; but I have none. You’ve got to let me have my way.”
    â€œI’m not going to argue,” sighed my mother; “you’re just like your father. You can argue up and down and round the corner and still I know I’m right. However, you’re far too selfish to bother about us.”
    I was furious with Mother. When she went I telephoned to Papa and he came over and took me to Chumley’s, where I had two brandy alexanders and was at once, as usual, scolded by him, for my extravagance
    â€œYou take too much advantage of your male escorts, that’s your weakness,” said my father; “men don’t like it.”
    â€œLook, Papa, have I got to write to Aunt Maybell’s Soul Secrets Column or something,” I said, tears coming into my eyes; “I want to talk to a realist. I had another fight with Mother. Why are there good, gentle women in the world? They make wonderful mammas— and I don’t pretend I’m a good daughter—but what a pain in the neck they are!”
    â€œYou owe your mother a lot,” said he, of course.
    â€œLife, love, but not the declining of happiness,” said I. “I could write a book about what she doesn’t know.”
    â€œWell, why don’t you?”
    â€œI would,” said I gloomily, “if I didn’t know so much. The trouble is that I haven’t a naïve young flame, my Pegasus isn’t a pony. I’ve read the world’s best literature and the world’s best critics and inspiration comes only when you’re green.”
    â€œI’d like to fan your noble tail,” said Papa, laughing. “Come on, lazybones, admit you’re a slob and have a good time out of life. You know damn well you don’t care who wins the horse race as long as you’ve got a dinner date.”
    â€œThat’s true,” I said, sighing; “I’ll end up yet strutting it as fattest goose round the village mudhole; I like anywhere and nowhere; it’s ambition with clay feet.”
    My father is very sympathetic and has many of my characteristics, although not my vices; and perhaps this is his weakness. We spent a lovely evening talking over everything and Papa told me about my mother’s youth (he became moist-eyed) and many other things; and as you don’t know my father, Solander Fox, I have to explain that all this was told with exuberance, freshness, and astounding detail as if it had all happened yesterday, no, half an hour ago, and Solander had been a witness of it all. Not only that, my father’s genius as a conversationalist is such that no one can remember later whether or not he, too, was not a witness of all the events and conversations Solander describes; the truth is, I have heard friends of my father describe events at which they never could have been present (and which, in fact, did not take place except in my father’s imagination). Solander’s stories are the kind which are carried all over town; months later they come back to him in a different— usually a diluted—form. Solander is prized as an evening visitor, he is a great entertainer, he has spent his life at it; he is too much of an entertainer, he has spent his talent at it. And in this respect we are very much alike. That is why we still like to go out together, in spite of the differences in our tastes and morals, and why we can chuckle robustly, argue earnestly for hours, and come home exhilarated. Of course, it is not Freudian love, for I never wanted to marry anyone like my father; I always preferred