n the
dining room the neat little parlour became a mess. The men threw hats
and overcoats on the backs of the chairs. Their rubbers slopped under
them. They rarely troubled to take them off. While waiting avidly for
dinner to be served they struck matches and lighted cigarettes and
cigars. Sometimes they called in to Maxine, "Say, girlie, when'll supper
be ready? I'm 'bout gone."

The women trotted upstairs, chattering, and primped and fussed in
Maxine's neat and austere little bedroom. They used Maxine's powder and
dropped it about on the tidy dresser and the floor. They brushed away
only what had settled on the front of their dresses. They forgot to
switch off the electric light, leaving Maxine to do it, thriftily,
between serving courses. Every penny counted. Every penny meant release.

After dinner Maxine and her mother sat down to eat off the edge of the
kitchen table. It was often nine o'clock before the last straggling
diner, sprawling on the parlour davenport with his evening paper and
cigar, departed, leaving Maxine to pick up the scattered newspapers,
cigarette butts, ashes; straighten chairs, lock doors.

Then the dishes. The dishes!

When Arnold Hatch asked her to go to a movie she shook her head,
usually. "I'm too tired. I'm going to read, in bed."

"Read, read! That's all you do. What're you reading?"

"Oh, about Italy. La bel Napoli!" She collected travel folders and often
talked in their terms. In her mind she always said "brooding Vesuvius";
"blue Mediterranean"; "azure coasts"; "Egypt's golden sands."

Arnold Hatch ate dinner nightly at Pardee's. He lived in the house next
door, which he owned, renting it to an Okoochee family and retaining the
upstairs front bedroom for himself. A tall, thin, eye-glassed young man
who worked in the offices of the Okoochee Oil and Refining Company,
believed in Okoochee, and wanted to marry Maxine. He had twice kissed
her. On both these occasions his eyeglasses had fallen off, taking the
passion, so to speak, out of the process. When Maxine giggled,
uncontrollably, he said, "Go on--laugh! But some day I'm going to kiss
you and I'll take my glasses off first. Then look out!"

You have to have a good deal of humour to stand being laughed at by a
girl you've kissed; especially a girl who emphasizes her aloofness by
wearing those high-collared white silk blouses.

"You haven't got a goitre, have you?" said Arnold Hatch, one evening,
brutally. Then, as she had flar