Hannah
Winter approved. She would be an early bride, one could see that. No
career for Marcia, though she sketched rather well, sewed cleverly,
played the piano a little, sang just a bit, could trim a hat or turn a
dress, danced the steps of the day. She could even cook a commendable
dinner. Hannah saw to that. She saw to it, as well, that the boy and the
girl went to the theatre occasionally; heard a concert at rare
intervals. There was little money for luxuries. Sometimes Marcia said,
thoughtlessly, "Mother, why do you wear those stiff plain things all the
time?"

Hannah, who had her own notion of humour, would reply, "The better to
clothe you, my dear."

Her girlhood friends she saw seldom. Two of them had married. One was a
spinster of forty. They had all moved to the south side during the
period of popularity briefly enjoyed by that section in the late '90s.
Hannah had no time for their afternoon affairs. At night she was too
tired or too busy for outside diversions. When they met her they said,
"Hannah Winter, you don't grow a day older. How do you do it!"

"Hard work."

"A person never sees you. Why don't you take an afternoon off some time?
Or come in some evening? Henry was saying only yesterday that he enjoyed
his talk with you so much, and that you were smarter than any man
insurance agent. He said you sold him I don't know how many thousand
dollars' worth before he knew it. Now I suppose I'll have to go without
a new fur coat this winter."

Hannah smiled agreeably. "Well, Julia, it's better for you to do without
a new fur coat this winter than for me to do without any."

The Clint Darrow of her girlhood dreams, grown rather paunchy and
mottled now, and with the curling black hair but a sparse grizzled
fringe, had belied Horace Winter's contemptuous opinion. He was a
moneyed man now, with an extravagant wife, but no children. Hannah
underwrote him for a handsome sum, received his heavy compliments with a
deft detachment, heard his complaints about his extravagant wife with a
sympathetic expression, but no comment--and that night spent the ten
minutes before she dropped off to sleep in pondering the impenetrable
mysteries of the institution called marriage. She had married the solid
Hermie, and he had turned out to be quicksand. She had not married the
whipper-snapper Clint, and now he was one of the rich city's rich men.
Had she married him against her parents' wishes would Clint Darrow now
be compla