LADIES-IN-WAITING
She said she thought it was very selfish in a government to accept a man’s whole time and give him no remuneration; that the Secretary of the Treasury had only to say to the banks, “Let there be money,” and there was money. There would be plenty for everybody if only the engravers and laborers at the Mint would not strike.
I reminded her that men were remunerated sufficiently in being allowed to serve their country in time of war.
She returned that she thought that point of view foolish and fantastic, but if she found, after a year, that her daughter’s peace of mind was threatened, would I then change my name and live on Dorothea’s income until I could establish myself in the practice of the law? She said that I must acknowledge that this was a ridiculously generous proposition and one that neither my talents nor my station in life merited.
I replied that the proposition meant to me that I should simply be selling myself and buying her daughter, and that I declined to accept it.(“Oh, Charlotte!” the girl interrupted with a catch in her throat, “don’t you think that was splendid and clever, too?”)
216
