"You can have all the tea you want, but you'll have to use condensed
milk!"
At this George would say "Damn!" and take himself and his evening paper
to the armchair in the front window. When Emeline would go in, after a
cursory disposition of the dishes, she would find Julia curled in his
arms, and George sourly staring over the little silky head.
"It's up to you, and it's your job, and it makes me damn sick to come
home to such a dirty pen as this!" George sometimes burst out. "Look at
that--and look at that--look at that mantel!"
"Well--well--well!" Emeline would answer sharply, putting the mantel
straight, or commencing to do so with a sort of lazy scorn. "I can't do
everything!"
"Other men go home to decent dinners," George would pursue sullenly;
"their wives aren't so darn lazy and selfish--"
Such a start as this always led to a bitter quarrel, after which
Emeline, trembling with anger, would clear a corner of the cluttered
drawing-room table and take out a shabby pack of cards for solitaire,
and George would put Julia to bed. All her life Julia Page remembered
these scenes and these bedtimes.
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