months, and then beat
it."

"I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie.
No, don't open the window. The night air makes me cough."

Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something
would have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying out
at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was the
question of food. Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently
more and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin. If
only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. There
was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy
harborings of years, that might be used for a servant. Or she could move
up there, and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to
come in now and then to clean up.

She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in
mind was Willy Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews
had somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this
sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it
afterwards. She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowing
flunkies--a picture of wealth gained from the movies--and by women
who moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and
conservatory in low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes of
pearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for
money.

She hated the Cardews.

On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.

"Asleep yet, mother?"

"No. Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all."

"Mother," she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, "we've got to
change things around here. It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing. We've
got to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent a
room."

She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.

"I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to let
the neighbors begin looking down on me now."

"Now, listen, mother--"

"Go on away, Edie."

"But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all
but three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store
isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.
We've got a yard."

"I won't be bothered with any dog," said the querulous voice, from the
darkness.

With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use,
anyhow? Let them go on, the