Oh, my love, my love, hasn't it dawned
on you yet what you are to me? Here's the whole earth in a conspiracy to give
you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the skin, or cheat you out of
your money, or let you die of overwork and underfeeding, and I haven't the mere
right to look after you. Why, I don't even know if you have sense enough to put
on warm things when the weather's cold."
"Dick, you're the most awful boy to talk to--really! How do you suppose I
managed when you were away?"
"I wasn't here, and I didn't know. But now I'm back I'd give everything I have
for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain."
"Your success too?"
This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words.
"As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you're a trial, Maisie! You've been cooped up in
the schools too long, and you think every one is looking at you. There aren't
twelve hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend
and don't care. Remember, I've seen twelve hundred men dead in toadstool-beds.
It's only the voice of the tiniest little fraction of people that makes
success. The real world doesn't care a tinker's--doesn't care a bit. For aught
you or I know, every man in the world may be arguing with a Maisie of his own.
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