human
Who is that? rather querulously.
gpt
Oh, Helen! I must have been asleep. I dreamed I was out far away on the water. Just your mother and I, far, far away! It was rather jolly. Funny I was trying to add up about silk stockings and I made such a ridiculous mistake. You see there are five of you who wear silk stockings, not counting Bobby and me. I wasn't counting in socks. Five persons having two legs apiece makes ten legs--silk stockings cost one dollar apiece, no, a pair--fifty cents apiece--that makes five dollars for ten legs. Everybody has to put on a new pair every day, so that makes three hundred and sixty-five pairs a year, three hundred and sixty-six in leap year, seven hundred and thirty stockings--that makes one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars--thirty, in leap year--just for stockings. Seems preposterous, doesn't it? But here was my mistake, right here--people don't have to put on a new pair every day but just a clean pair, so I have to do my calculating all over. You can help me, honey. How many pairs of silk stockings does it take to run one of you? You just say one, and I can compute the rest.
human
Oh, Daddy, I don't know,
gpt
Well, don't cry about it. It seems funny for stockings to make any one cry. Do you know, I've been crying about them, too? It is so confusing for people to have two legs and for leap year to have one more day, so some years people have to have more--maybe not have more, but change them oftener. I cry out of one eye about stockings, and the other sheds tears about French chops. I feel very much worried about French chops. It seems they sell them by the piece and not by the pound as they do loin chops--ten cents apiece, so the bills say. We usually get a dozen and a half for a meal--eighteen--that's a dozen and a half. Now there are seven of us and the four servants, that makes eleven, not quite a dozen. What I am worried about is that some of you don't get two chops apiece. I am wondering all the time which ones don't eat enough. There is nothing at all on one little French chop, although I'm blessed if I could make one go down me now. But, honey, promise me if your mother and I do take this trip that this young man, whose name has escaped me, is going to arrange for us, that you will find out who it is among you who eats only one chop and make 'em eat more. I am afraid it is Nan and Bobby. They are more like your mother, and of course fairies don't really eat anything to speak of--but it must be of the best--always of the best. She has never known anything but luxury, and luxury she must have. What difference does it make to me? I love to work--but the days are too short. Take some off of the night then--six hours in bed is enough for any man. Edison says even that is too much. What's that young man's name? Well, whatever it is, I like him. He should have been an architect--I bet his foundations would have gone deep enough and the authorities would never have condemned one of his walls as unsafe. That's what they did to me, but it wasn't my fault--Shockoe Creek was the trouble--creeping up like a thief in the night and undermining my work.