"
"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's
death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl
with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think about
it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I
couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that or her me, Carrie, any
more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mama-made matches
that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was
too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman near to my own age."
"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that
gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer
to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"
"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Just doing that
little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent."
"I'm--that way."
"We're a lot alike, Carrie. At heart, I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless
I'm pretty much off my guess, you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?"
"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"
"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud
of."
"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I
haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.
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