AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And Daisy will give you that?”
“Sure; she’s a great girl, Thursday. She’s not you, of course, but she’s a great girl; very . . .”
“Dependable?”
“Solid, perhaps. Not exciting, but reliable.”
“Do you love her?”
“Of course.”
“Then there seems little to talk about. What do you want from me?”
Landen hesitated.
“I just wanted to know that I was making the right decision.”
“You said you loved her.”
“I do.”
“And she will give you the children you want.”
“That too.”
“Then I think you should marry her.”
Landen hesitated slightly.
“So that’s okay with you?”
“You don’t need my permission.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to ask if you think this could all have had some other outcome?”
I placed a flannel over my face and groaned silently. It wasn’t something I wanted to deal with right now.
“No. Landen, you must marry her. You promised her and besides—” I thought quickly. “—I have a job in Ohio.”
“Ohio?”
“As a LiteraTec. One of my colleagues at work offered it to me.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Cable. Great fellow he is too.”
Landen gave up, sighed, thanked me and promised to send me an invitation. He left the house quietly—when I came downstairs ten minutes later, my mother was still wearing a forlorn “I wish he were my son-in-law” sort of look.
24.
Martin Chuzzlewit Is Reprieved
My chief interest in all the work that I have conducted over the past forty or so years has been concerned with the elasticity of bodies. One tends to think only of substances such as rubber in this category but almost everything one can think of can be bent and stretched. I include, of course, space, time, distance and reality . . .
PROFESSOR MYCROFT NEXT
CROFTY!—”
