“The family infant! Remember, ‘children should be seen and not heard.’ There’s the chair for you, and if you are very ‘pie’ and don’t contradict your elders, you’ll be rewarded later.”
Thurley accepted the rôle gladly. It was evident they considered her a promising infant. Some day she would be able to tell them the same half-patronizing things or be introducing some other prodigy into the family in equally clever, blasé fashion. That first and memorable dinner party was more of an education than all the lessons Thurley had endured since her New York advent. Here she saw the demonstration of the theories taught her regarding form, cleverness and so on. Long before the evening was ended, she felt she could now dispense with the social secretary, the beauty doctor and the gymnast. She had only to observe her “family” and practise the results of the observation before her mirror.
“We are waiting for Polly Harris and Collin Hedley,” Hobart remarked during a lull in the battle. “Polly is as punctual as an alarm clock, but Collin would not be on time at his own funeral, if it were possible. We always give him a half hour leeway and never mind because Polly is such fun when she rages.”
Thurley murmured some reply, and then Caleb Patmore, who had been looking at her almost rudely, began anew his argument. Despite his depraved ideas regarding novel writing, Thurley liked him. He had the clean-cut business air which she admired, rather than the air of the proverbial long-haired novelist with a hemstitched neck scarf.
“Of course we respect Daphne,” he said grudgingly. “For five years she has made her living writing poetry—POETRY—and how many can say as much? No bribes of the corset makers for limerick advertisements ever tempted her, but now she has sensibly surrendered in favor of marrying one Oscar Human, Indiana plumber at large. The only remarkable thing about it is that Oscar Human would marry a failure poetess who must have forgotten how to cook a boiled dinner or be interested in the new style nickel fittings! Well, luck to Daphne Rhodes, but what good was it all? A starved, embittered space filler, she admitted, soothing a makeup man’s difficulties by rounding out the page with a plump sonnet.”