human
Ah, Mr. Mudison, said Mrs. Underbunk,
gpt
I fear you are a sad cynic.
human
Not a cynic, said I.
gpt
On the contrary, I am rising as a defender. Those who attack us most are those who have tried to get in and cannot.
human
The bee scorns the butterfly,
gpt
Yet the butterfly's brain is as big as the bee's,
human
Tristan where the singing is music, and I can lean back and enjoy it, with eyes closed to shut out the absurd sight of the princess and her clandestine caller awakening with melody the forest in which her husband is hunting. Gladys Underbunk and I thoroughly agree. When Dumple began to make coins disappear in the air to an accompaniment of
gpt
and
human
and
gpt
she turned to me and whispered,
human
Do you know, Mr. Mudison, I sometimes wonder why a man of your lovable nature has never married.
gpt
My bachelor vows have been strangely shaken of late,
human
Seriously?
gpt
Seriously, said I.
human
I have often thought of marriage, but, you know, I am one of those unfortunates who have been born to high place. In me you see the apotheosis of the Mudison ambition for centuries. My brothers all married for love, and have been forgotten. To me it was left to uphold the family name, and to do it I have an income sufficient to pay for my apartment in town and my visits to my friends at Newport; to allow me a few luxuries like a horse or two and a car. But I have to economize. Suppose I married? I see the decline of the Mudisons. I see my fortune divided, say into three, and my children compelled by our straitened circumstances to move in the dancing-class set, their children going to the upper West Side, and our name plastered beneath the speaking-tubes of the Ophelia and the Clarissa. We owe something to posterity, so I had vowed that I should be the last of the Mudisons.