is to look at all the women the men get tired of and
desert. And the slaves the mothers are! I knew that!" she interpolated
with a woman's pride to prove to this other pretty woman that even she
was not single in the world because she had not had her chance. "I c'd
have married once, and came near making one great fool of myself like
the others. But I got wise in time. You see he weren't no good," she
explained frankly. "I expect, though, he's eatin' off some other woman
before this.... Girls always expect to draw the grand prize in the
lottery, where there's mostly blanks, and get a man who'll love 'em
more'n anythin' else in the world, and give 'em a good time all their
lives. Ain't that so?"

Milly agreed with reservations. Ernestine's observations had been
confined to a class of women with whom Milly was not familiar, but her
conclusions applied fairly well to the class Milly knew best,--the
so-called "educated" and well-to-do women.

"Well, that ain't life," Ernestine pronounced with clenching force.

"Women have hearts, you must remember," Milly sighed a little
sentimentally. "They'll always be foolish."

"Not that way--when they learn!"

"I wonder."

"And that's the reason I've been givin' yer why girls don't take to any
work seriously and make somethin' of it, same as a man has to. Oh, I've
seen lots of 'em--just lots!"

She waved a hand disgustedly.

Milly was now thoroughly interested in her new acquaintance, and they
went deeper into the complicated woman-question. Ernestine, she
perceived, had learned her lessons in the hard school of the man's world
of give and take, and learned them thoroughly. And she had the rare
ability to learn by experience. This with her good health and an innate
sense of orderliness and thrift, possibly due to the Teutonic strain in
her blood, had sufficed to put her ahead in the race. For she was even
less educated than Milly, and naturally less quick. But having touched
realities all her life, she had achieved an abiding sense of fact that
Milly was now totally incapable of acquiring. Her philosophy was simple,
but it embraced the woman question, suffrage, and the man-made world. To
live, she said, you must give something of yourself that is worth the
while of Somebody Else to take and pay for--pay as high as he can be
made to pay. To Milly it seemed a harsh philosophy. She wished to give
when and what she liked to whom she pleased and take whatever she
wanted. It was th