---"

"Are you practising small talk on me?" Mary asked.

"You've said it," Trudy admitted. "That last is the way I'm going to
talk about Gaylord to his friends. I'll make him a success if he will
only mind me. Just think--I'll be calling on Beatrice O'Valley before
long! She will have to know me because Gay helped furnish her
apartment and was one of her ushers. It will mean everything for us to
know her--and I'm never going to appear at all down and out, either.
People never take you seriously if you seem to need money. Debt can't
frighten me. I was raised on it. All I need is Gay's family reputation
and my own hair and teeth and I'll breeze in before any of the other
entries. I came to ask if you won't come to see where I live?" She
smiled her prettiest. "Gay is at his club and we can talk. It was
quite a bomb in the enemies' camp when he married--people just can't
dun a married man like they do a bachelor."

"I'll come next week." Mary tried putting off the evil day.

"No--now. I want your advice--and to show you my clothes."

"You will have clothes, Trudy, when you don't have food."

"You have to these days--no good time unless you do."

She kissed Mrs. Faithful and promised to have them all up for dinner.
Then she tucked her arm in Mary's and pranced down the street with
her, talking at top speed of how horrid it was that they had to walk
and not drive in a cab like Beatrice, and concluding with a
dissertation on Gaylord's mean disposition.

"I'm not mean, Mary, unless I want to accomplish something--but
Gaylord is mean on general principle. He sulks and tells silly lies
when you come to really know him. Oh, I'm not madly in love--but we
can get along without throwing things. It's better than marrying a
clod-hopper who couldn't show me anything better than his mother's
green-plush parlour."

"Doesn't it seem hard to have to pretend to love him?"

"No, he's so stupid," said the debonair Mrs. Vondeplosshe as she
brought Mary up before the entrance of the Graystone, a cheap
apartment house with a marble entrance that extended only a quarter of
the way up; from there on ordinary wood and marbleized paper finished
the deed. The Vondeplosshes had a rear apartment. Their windows looked
upon ash cans and delivery entrances, the front apartments with their
bulging bay windows being twenty-five dollars a month more rent. As it
was, they were paying forty-five, and very lucky to have the chance to
pay it.

Trud