man--though that sounds like Jane Austen.
And--"

"And she's--well, she isn't the wealthiest young lady in the country,
but the Pipers _are_ rich, though they never go and splurge around
about it. And I'm living on scholarships and borrowed money from the
family--and even after I really start working I probably won't make
enough to live on for two or three years at least. And you can't ask a
girl like that--"

"Oh, Ted, this is the twentieth century! I'm not telling you to hang up
your hat and live on your wife's private income--" "That's fortunate,"
from Ted, rather stubbornly and with a set jaw.

"But there's no reason on earth--if you both really loved each other and
wanted to get married--why you couldn't let her pay her share for
the first few years. You know darn well you're going to make money
sometime--"

"Well--yes."

"Well, then. And Elinor's sporting. She isn't the kind that needs six
butlers to live--she doesn't live that way now. That's just pride, Ted,
thinking that--and a rather bum variety of pride when you come down to
it. I hate these people who moan around and won't be happy unless they
can do everything themselves--they're generally the kind that give their
wives a charge account at Lucile's and ten dollars a year pocket money
and go into blue fits whenever poor spouse runs fifty cents over her
allowance."

Ted pauses, considering. Finally,

"No, Ollie--I don't think I'm quite that kind of a fool. And almost thou
convincest me--and all that. But--well--that isn't the chief difficulty,
after all."

"Well, what _is_?" from Oliver, annoyedly.

Ted hesitates, speaking slowly.

"Well--after the fact that I'm not sure--France," he says at last, and
his mouth shuts after the word as if it never wanted to open again.

Oliver spreads both hands out hopelessly.

"Are you _never_ going to get over that, you ass?"

"You didn't do the things I did," from Ted, rather difficultly. "If you
had--"

"If I had I'd have been as sorry as you are, probably, that I'd knocked
over the apple cart occasionally. But I wouldn't spend the rest of
my life worrying about it and thinking I wasn't fit to go into decent
society because of what happened to most of the A.E.F. Why you sound as
if you'd committed the unpardonable sin. And it's nonsense."

"Well--thinking of Elinor--I'm not too darn sure I didn't," from Ted,
dejectedly.

"That comes of being born in New England and that's all there is to it.
Anyhow,