e a pretty hard time of it getting ten thousand dollars' insurance
after the doctors got through with you. Twenty-five years of pinochle
and poker and the fat of the land haven't added up any bumps in the old
stocking under the mattress."

"Say, looka here," objected Gabe, more red-faced than usual, "I didn't
know was proposing to no Senatorial investigating committee. Say, you
talk about them foreign noblemen being mercenary! Why, they ain't in it
with you girls to-day. A feller is got to propose to you with his bank
book in one hand and a bunch of life-insurance policies in the other.
You're right; I ain't saved much. But Ma selig always had everything she
wanted. Say, when a man marries it's different. He begins to save."

"There!" said Effie quickly. "That's just it. Twenty years ago I'd have
been glad and willing to start like that, saving and scrimping and loving
a man, and looking forward to the time when four figures showed up in the
bank account where but three bloomed before. I've got what they call the
home instinct. Give me a yard or so of cretonne, and a photo of my
married sister down in Iowa, and I can make even a boarding-house inside
bedroom look like a place where a human being could live. If I had been
as wise at twenty as I am now, Gabie, I could have married any man I
pleased. But I was what they call capable. And men aren't marrying
capable girls. They pick little yellow-headed, blue-eyed idiots that
don't know a lamb stew from a soup bone when they see it. Well, Mr. Man
didn't show up, and I started in to clerk at six per. I'm earning as
much as you are now. More. Now, don't misunderstand me, Gabe. I'm not
throwing bouquets at myself. I'm not that kind of a girl. But I could
sell a style 743 Slimshape to the Venus de Milo herself. The Lord knows
she needed one, with those hips of hers. I worked my way up, alone. I'm
used to it. I like the excitement down at the store. I'm used to
luxuries. I guess if I was a man I'd be the kind thy call a good
provider--the kind that opens wine every time there's half an excuse for
it, and when he dies his widow has to take in boarders. And, Gabe, after
you've worn tailored suits every year for a dozen years, you can't go
back to twenty-five-dollar ready-mades and be happy."

"You could if you loved a man," said Gabe stubbornly.

The hard lines around the jaw and the experienced lines about the eyes
seemed suddenly to stand out on E