Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/45

Rh "Very economical?"

"Well, of course! I'm not making much yet."

"And you're always busy!"

"Yes . . ."

"You have patients here, at Driebergen, and all around."

"Yes," he said, with a laugh, "but they don't pay me."

"No."

"Why not?"

He shrugged his shoulders:

"Because they can't."

She shrugged her shoulders also:

"It's very noble of you, Addie. . . . But we have to live too."

"Yes. But don't we live?"

"If we moved to the Hague, though . . .?"

"We should have to be very economical."

"You're well off."

"I'm not well off. . . . Tilly, you know I'm not. Papa has a pretty considerable fortune. But he has a good many calls. . . ."

"Calls! . . . why, you're his only son!"

"He might give us an allowance . . . until I was making more money. . . . But even then we should have to be economical . . . and live in a very small house."

She clasped her large, white hands:

"I'm sick of economy," she said, coarsely, "sick and tired of poverty. I've never had anything in my life but poverty, decent, genteel poverty. I would rather be a beggar, simply; I'd rather be a poor girl in the street than go through decent, genteel poverty again."

"It wouldn't be so bad as all that."

"Not so bad, perhaps, but still a small house, with one servant, and seeing how far a pound of