The Project Gutenberg EBook of One Basket, by Edna Ferber

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Title: One Basket

Author: Edna Ferber

Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #489]
Release Date: April, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE BASKET ***

Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.

ONE BASKET

THIRTY-ONE SHORT STORIES

BY

EDNA FERBER

INTRODUCTION ix
THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD 1
THE GAY OLD DOG 11
THAT'S MARRIAGE 29
FARMER IN THE DELL 49
UN MORSO DOO PANG 68
LONG DISTANCE 89
THE MATERNAL FEMININE 94
.... remainder not included

The Woman Who Tried to Be Good [1913]

Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman--so
bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street,
from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a
man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street
with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at--in
her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat
in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers
were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.

Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round
Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent,
dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out
of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set
with flashy imitation stones--or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow
hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her
appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump
in the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it
and paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She
owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot--did
Blanche Devine.

In a larger town than o