I tell you!” she exclaimed with rich conviction—“I’m going to be right there on the front row the night it opens up on Broadway!—I know that a play that has taken anyone so many years will be a masterpiece—every word pure gold—I don’t want to miss a word of it.”
“Quite!” said Starwick coldly, in his mannered and affected tone. His ruddy face had flushed crimson with embarrassment; turning, he called sharply and coldly to the little dog, in a high and rather womanish voice: “Heel, Tang! Heel, I say!”
He snapped his fingers and the little dog came trotting meekly toward him. Before Starwick’s cold and scornful impassivity, Effie’s broad and wholesome face did not alter a jot from its expression of radiant goodwill, but suddenly her eyes, which, set in her robust and friendly countenance, were the tortured mirror of her jealous, envious, possessive, and ravenously curious spirit, had grown hard and ugly, and the undernote of malice in her gay tones was more apparent than ever when she spoke again.
“Pooly,” she said, laughing, taking Horton affectionately by the arm and drawing close to him with the gesture of a bitterly jealous and possessive female, who, by the tortured necessity of her own spirit, must believe that “her man” is the paragon of the universe, and herself the envy of all other women, who lust to have him, but must gnash their teeth in vain—“Pooly,” she said lightly, and drawing close to him, “maybe that’s what’s wrong with us!… Maybe that’s what it takes to make you write a great play!… Yes, sir!” she said gaily, “I believe that’s it!… I believe I’ll save up all my spending money until I have enough to buy you a bee-yew-teeful tailored suit just like the one that Mr. Starwick has on…. Yes, sir!” She nodded her head emphatically in a convinced manner. “That’s just exactly what I’m going to do!… I’m going to get Mr. Starwick to give me the address of his tailor—and have him make you a bee-yew-teeful new suit of English clothes—and then, maybe, you’ll turn into a great genius like Mr. Starwick and Eugene!”
“The hell you will!” he said coarsely and heartily. “What’s wrong with the one I got on? I only had it three years—why, it’s as good as the day I bought it.” And he laughed with hearty, robust masculinity.
“Why, Poo-o-ly!” she said reproachfully. “It’s turning green! And I do so want you to get dressed up and be a genius like Mr. Starwick!”
“Nope!” he said in his tone of dominant finality. “I’ll wear this pair of pants till it falls off me. Then I’ll go into Filene’s bargain basement and buy another pair. Nope! You can’t make an æsthete out of me!
