ng to be
fresh, and he doesn't know how."

She said it loud enough for the young man to hear. Lila was very much
frightened.

They left the subway at Simpson Street and boarded a jammed trolley-car
for Westchester. Fannie paid all the fares.

"It's my treat," she said; "I'm flush. Gee, ain't it hot! I wish we'd
brought our bathing-suits."

Much to Lila's relief the young man who had annoyed her was no longer
visible. Fannie talked all the way to Westchester in so loud a voice
that nearly everybody in the car could hear her. Lila was shocked and
awed by her friend's showiness and indifference.

From Westchester they were to walk the two hot miles to the park.
Already Lila's new shoes had blistered her feet. But she did not mention
this. It was her own fault. She had deliberately bought shoes that were
half a size too small.

In the main street of Westchester they prinked, smoothing each other's
rumpled dresses and straightening each other's peach-basket hats.

"Lila," said Fannie, "everybody's looking at you. I say you're _too_
pretty. Lucky for me I've got my young man where I want him, or else
you'd take him away from me."

"I would not!" exclaimed Lila, "and it's you they're looking at."

Fannie was delighted. "_Do_ I look nice?" she wheedled.

"You look sweet!"

As a matter of fact, Fannie looked bold and handsome. Her clothes were
too expensive for her station in life. Her mother suspected how she came
by them, but was so afraid of actually knowing that she never brought
the point to an issue; only sighed in secret and tried not to see or
understand.

Now and then motors passed through the crowds straggling to the park,
and in exchange for gratuitous insults from small boys and girls left
behind them long trails of thick dust and the choking smell of burnt
gasoline. In the sun the mercury was at one hundred and twenty degrees.

"There's a hog for you," exclaimed Fannie. She indicated a stout man in
shirt-sleeves. He had his coat over one arm, his collar and necktie
protruding from the breast pocket. His wife, a meagre woman, panted at
his side. She carried two heavy children, one of them not yet born.

Half the people carried paper parcels or little suitcases made of straw
in which were bathing-suits and sandwiches. It would be low tide, but
between floating islands of swill and sewage there would be water, salt,
wet, and cool.

"My mother," said Fannie, "doesn't like me to come to these places
a