He unclasped her hand slowly and they walked to one of the green monsters, vain of their size and path and importance, which take people uptown.
College closed. Mermaid went home. She found Keturah Hand in “poor health,” but a diagnosis of any specific complaint seemed difficult.
“Old age and remorse, my girl,” her aunt assured her. “Thinking of all the things I’ve done I might better not have done, or have done differently.”
“Why, any one can do that,” Mermaid answered. “I looked for you to develop some interesting ailment, Aunt Keturah, something new and original that I might exercise my knowledge upon. I am now certified to be competent to analyze you. I know all the diets. If there is anything you’d like particularly to eat, don’t eat it.”
“You remind me of John Pogginson of Patchogue,” protested Mrs. Hand. “An up-to-date doctor put him on a diet some time ago. But instead of telling John what he couldn’t eat he gave him a list of all the things he could eat. There were eighty-seven of them; and in the eighty-seven were things John Pogginson had never heard of. He had a wonderful time. But his wife almost died of indigestion. She said it wasn’t what she ate, but seeing the things John could eat, that made her ill.”
The two women sat down that night for what Keturah called “a long talk.” Mrs. Hand wanted first to discuss Mermaid’s plans; but Mermaid said she hadn’t any.
“Thanks to you,” she told her aunt, “I’ve been able to get what I wanted; but I confess I don’t know yet what I want to do with it. I want to go to work, of course, and I hope I can get into experimental work of some kind. Perhaps at the Rockefeller Institute, perhaps elsewhere. Chemicals won’t cure all the ills flesh is heir to, but they will cure a lot more than we know about. I don’t care about a career, that is, I don’t care about making a world-startling discovery or getting particularly rich or especially famous. I do care about getting a reasonable amount of happiness and satisfaction out of life; and that means being busy at something congenial to you. And going ahead a little in one direction or another.”
“I hope you’ll marry,” said Mrs. Hand, abruptly.
“I hope so, too,” assented Mermaid. “If I can be so fortunate as to find the right man, or if some man can be fortunate enough to find me the right woman, or--well, both. We’ve both got to find each other, I suppose.”