Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/53

 He’s very sensitive, under a well-schooled impersonal manner.”

St. Peter laughed. “Nonsense, Lillian! If he were, he couldn’t pick up a dinner party and walk off with it, as he almost always does. I don’t mind when it’s our dinner, but I hate seeing him do it in other people’s houses.”

“Be fair, Godfrey. You know that if you’d once begun to talk about your work in Spain, Louie would have followed it up with enthusiasm. Nobody is prouder of you than he.”

“That’s why I kept quiet. Support can be too able—certainly too fluent.”

“There you are; the dog in the manger! You won’t let him discuss your affairs, and you are annoyed when he talks about his own.”

“I admit I can’t bear it when he talks about Outland as his affair. (I mean Tom, of course, not their confounded place!) This calling it after him passes my comprehension. And Rosamond’s standing for it! It’s brazen impudence.”

Mrs. St. Peter frowned pensively. “I knew you wouldn’t like it, but they were so pleased about it, and their motives are so generous——”

“Hang it, Outland doesn’t need their generosity! They’ve got everything he ought to have had, and the least they can do is to be quiet about it, and not convert his very bones into a personal asset. It all comes down to this, my dear: one likes the 47

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