the store the other
day and I seen how blue you was I got to talkin' before I meant to.
That's the way with me when I get to feelin' sorry for anybody; I ain't
always understood."

"You're just right in everything you said. It ain't like I was a girl
that wasn't used to anything. If I do say so myself, there never was a
more popular girl in the gloves than I was--you know what refined and
genteel friends I had, Loo."

"That's what I always say--some girls could put up with this all right;
but a person that had the swell time an' friends you did--to marry an'
have to settle down like this--it just don't seem right. I always said,
the whole time we was chumming together, you was cut out for a society
life if ever a girl was. Of course, I ain't saying nothing against
Charley, but no fellow can expect a girl like you to stick to this."

Miss Tracy fanned herself with a folded newspaper; her large,
even-featured face glistened with tiny globules of perspiration; her
blond hair had lost some of its crimp.

"Nobody can say I haven't done my duty by Charley, Loo. If ever a girl
had a slow time it's been me; but I have been holdin' off, hoping he
might get into something else. He ain't never wanted to stick himself;
but it just seems like poundin' ragtime is all he's cut out for."

"A girl's gotta have life--that's what I always say. Just because you're
married ain't no sign you're an old woman; but I don't want to poke into
your business. If you make up your mind just you come over tonight after
he leaves, and you can bunk with me in the old room, just like we used
to. Lordy! wasn't them good old times?"

"Don't be surprised to see me, Loo. I ain't never let on to Charley, but
it's been in my head a long time. I'd a whole lot rather be back in the
department again than watchin' these four walls--I would."

"It's a darn shame! Why, I'd go clean daffy, Lil, if I had to stick
round the way you do. What's the use o' bein' married, I'd like to
know!"

"It won't be so easy to get back in the department, I'm afraid."

"Easy? Why, you can get your old job back like that!" Miss Tracy snapped
her fingers with gusto. "It was only yesterday that an ancient dame with
a glass eye bought a pair of chamois and asked for you--and Skinny heard
her, too. He knows you had a good, genteel trade--and watch him grab you
back! You ain't no dead one if you have been buried nearly two years."

"Ain't it so, Loo? Here I have been married going