human
Well our family may need something; it's the first intimation I've had, Katherine, that it's in distress--but I don't see that a young woman who votes is the crying need of the family.
gpt
She's in great luck, returned Katie,
human
Oh I haven't prowled around this town all summer, uncle, without seeing things that women ought to be voting about.
gpt
Well, Katie, you--you don't mean to take it up, do you?
human
Oh I don't know, uncle, what I mean to 'take up,' but I herewith serve notice that I'm going to take something up--something besides bridge and army gossip.
gpt
Uncle, does it ever come home to you that life's a pretty serious business?
human
Well I hadn't wanted it to come home to me tonight, he sighed plaintively.
gpt
I'm really most upset about this unfortunate affair. I had thought that you, Katie, would be pleasant.
human
Forgive me, she laughed.
gpt
I can see how it must disturb you, uncle, to hear me express a serious thought.
human
You've got the fidgets, Katie. Just the fidgets. That's what's the matter with the whole lot of you youngsters. It's becoming an epidemic--a sort of spiritual measles. Though I must say, I hadn't expected you to catch it. And just a word of warning, Katie. You've always been so unique as a trifler that one rather hates to see you swallowed up in the troop of serious-minded young women. I was talking to Darrett the other day--charming fellow, Darrett--and he held that your charm was in your brilliant smile. I told him I hadn't thought so much about the brilliant smile, but that I knew a good deal about a certain impish grin. Katie, you have a very disreputable grin. You have a way of directing it at me across ponderous drawing-rooms that I wish you'd stop. It gives me a sort of--'Oh I am on to you, uncle old boy' feeling that is most--
gpt
Disconcerting?
human
Unreverential.
gpt
Katie, why do you think it's so funny? Why does it make you want to grin?
human
You know. Else you wouldn't read the grin.
gpt
But I don't know. Nobody else grins at me.
human
Oh don't you think we're a good deal of a joke, uncle?
gpt
Joke? Who?--Why?
human
Us. The solemnity with which we take ourselves and the way the world lets us do it.
gpt
You have no reverence.
human
No, neither have you. That's why we get on.
gpt
Katie, do you know that the things you say sometimes puzzle me. They're queer. They burrow. They're so insultingly knowing, down at the root of their unknowingness. I'll think--'She didn't know how pat
human
Uncle, for a long time I only smiled. I seemed to know enough to do that. Do you think you could bear it with Christian fortitude if I were to tell you I'm beginning now to try and figure out what I was smiling at?
gpt
Katie dear, are you becoming world weary?
human
No, returned Katie,