de-portment. When the monitor passed the
basin, she dipped her sponge soppin'-wet."

"Anything new, ma?"

Mrs. Hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water.

"My feet's killin' me," she said.

Miss Ida Bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small
head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied
it with a bit of blue ribbon.

"I think it's a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your
stocking feet like this was backwoods."

"I can't get my feet in shoes--the joints--"

"You thump around as much as you darn please, ma. If Ida Bell don't like
the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends.
You let your feet hurt you any old way you want 'em to. I'm going to buy
you some arnica. Pass the kohlrabi."

"Well, my swell 'stenog friends,' as you call them, keep themselves
self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that's
more than I can say of my sister. If ma had the right kind of gumption with
you, she'd put a stop to it, all right."

Mrs. Hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her
hand.

"She's beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht
to God there was a father to rule youse!"

"I tell you, ma--mark my word for it--if old man Brookes ever finds out I'm
sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and
those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in
that office--that's what it will. A girl that's been made confidential
stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I
am, to pick up the morning's paper."

"Paula Krausnick's lunch was wrapped in the paper where Charley Cox got
pinched for speedin'--speedin'--speedin'--"

"Shut up, Genevieve! Just don't you let my business interfere with
yours, Ida Bell. Brookes don't know you're on earth outside of your
dictation-book. Take it from me, I bet he wouldn't know you if he met you
on the street."

"That's about all you know about it! If you found yourself confidential
stenographer to the biggest lawyer in town, he'd know you, all right--by
your loud dressing. A blind man could see you coming."

"Ma, are you going to stand there and let her talk to me thataway? I notice
she's willing to borrow my loud shirtwaists and my loud gloves and my loud
collars."

"If ma had more gumption with you, maybe things would be different."