Perhaps you feel that they are
better off? If you don't--I don't see what you have to complain
about. ..." And she would take her own way of punishing him for
his air of detachment and superiority. Bert was not blameless,
himself. It was all very well for Bert to talk of economy and
self-denial, but Bert himself paid twelve dollars a pair for his
golf-shoes, and was the first man at the club to order champagne
at the dance suppers.
Smouldering with indignation, Nancy would shrug off her
misgivings. Why should she hesitate over furs and new hangings for
the study and the present for the Appletons, when Bert was so
reckless? It would all be paid for, somehow.
"And why should I worry," Nancy asked herself, "and try to save a
few cents here and there, when Bert is simply flinging money right
and left?"
But for all her ready argument, Nancy was sometimes wretchedly
unhappy. She had many a bitter cry about it all--tears interrupted
by the honking of motors in the road, and ended with a dash of
powder, a cold towel pressed to hot eyes, and the cheerful fiction
of a headache. It was all very well to laugh and chat over the
tea-cups, to accept compliments upon her lovely home and her
lovely children, but she knew herself a hypocrite even while she
did so.
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