er
mother, at times. However, they don't seem very well acquainted with
each other. Of course if they'd lived together in a cove for years,
they'd have learned to tell each other their thoughts and plans, but
out in the big world there isn't time for anything except to dress and
go.

"I'm learning to dress. I used to think a girl could do that to please
herself, but no, the dresses are a thousand times more important than
the people inside them. It wouldn't matter how wise you are if your
dress is wrong, nor would it matter how foolish, if your dress is like
everybody else's. A person could be independent and do as she pleased,
but she wouldn't be in society. And nobody would believe she was
independent, they would just think she didn't know any better, or was
poor. Because, they don't know anything about being independent; they
want to be governed by their things. A poor person isn't cut off from
society because he hasn't money, but because he doesn't know how to
deal with high things, not having practised amongst them. It isn't
because society people have lots of money that they stick together, but
because all of them know what to do with the little forks and spoons.

"It is like the dearest, jolliest kind of game to me, to be with these
people, and say just what they say, and like what they like, and act as
they act--and that's the difference between me and them; it's not a
game to them, it's deadly earnest. They think they're LIVING!

"Do you think I could play at this so long that one day I'd imagine I
was doing what God had expected of me when he sent me to you, Brick?
Could I stay out in the big world until I'd think of the cove as a
cramped little pocket in the wilderness with two pennies jingling at
the bottom of it named Brick and Bill? If I thought there was any
danger of that, I'd start home in the morning!

"We are in a Kansas City hotel where all the feathers are in ladies'
hats and bonnets instead of in the gentlemen's hair. To get to our
rooms you go to a dark little door and push something that makes a bell
ring, and then you step into a dugout on pulleys, that shoots up in the
air so quick it makes you feel a part of you has fallen out and got
lost. The dugout doesn't slow up for the third story, it just stops
THAT QUICK--they call it an 'elevator' and it certainly does elevate!
You step out in a dim trail where there are dusky kinds of lights,
although it may be the middle of the day,