turn and
twist the pattern as she might, she was not going to have material
enough unless she pieced.

Her lids turned pink and her eyes filled up.

"Isn't it awful, Jap, to think of us being like this?"

"You make me think of a rabbit when you sniffle like that. Can't you cry
without wiggling your nose?"

Mrs. Toomey's quavering voice rose to the upper register:

"Do you suppose I care how I look when I feel like this?"

"How do you think I feel," ferociously, "with my stomach slumping in so
I can hardly straighten up?" He raised a long arm and shook a fist as
though in defiance of the Fate that had brought him to this. "I'd sell
my soul for a ham! I'm going to Scales and put up a talk."

Toomey found his hat and coat. "Don't cut your throat with the scissors
while I'm gone, Little Sunbeam, and I'll be back with food pretty
quick--unless I blow off."

He spoke with such confidence that Mrs. Toomey looked at him hopefully.
When he opened the door the furious gust that shook the house and
darkened the room with a cloud of dust seemed to suck him into a vortex.
Mrs. Toomey watched him round the corner with a sense of relief. Now
that she was alone she could cry comfortably and look as ugly as she
liked, so the tears flowed copiously as she stood at the table puzzling
over the pattern and cloth. They flowed afresh when she proved beyond
the question of a doubt that she would have to piece the under-arm
sleeve. Simultaneously she wondered if she could do it so skilfully that
Mrs. Abram Pantin would not see the piece. Then she frowned in vexation
at the realization that it was becoming second nature to wonder what
Prissy Pantin would think. Was it possible that there had been a time
when she had debated as to whether she wanted to know Mrs. Abram Pantin
at all?

When she had married Jap she had thought she was done forever with the
miserable poverty and hateful economies that are the lot of the family
of a small-town minister; that after years of suppression of opinions
and tastes in order not to evoke criticism or give offense, she at last
was in a position to assert herself.

And now after a taste of freedom, of power and opulence, here she was
back in practically the same position and rapidly developing the same
mental attitude towards those more affluent and, therefore, more
socially important than herself. Mrs. Toomey's thoughts were much the
color of the serge into which she slashed.

Finally, after a gl