o fight Ma Fike and all the fool rules.
I enjoy smoking here twice as much as I would anywhere else. And Fike
isn't half as bad as the board of visitors--bunch of fat, rich, old
Upper-West-Siders with passementeried bosoms, doing tea-table charity,
and asking us impertinent questions, and telling a bunch of hard-worked
slaves to be virtuous and wash behind their ears--the soft, ignorant,
conceited, impractical parasites! But still, it's all sort of like a
cranky boarding-school for girls--and you know what fun the girls have
there, with midnight fudge parties and a teacher pussy-footing down the
hall trying to catch them."

"I don't know. I've never been to one."

"Well--doesn't matter.... Another thing--some day, when you come to know
more men-- Know many?"

"Very few."

"Well, you'll find this town is full of bright young men seeking an
economical solution of the sex problem--to speak politely--and you'll
find it a relief not to have them on your door-step. 'S safe here....
Come in with me, kid. Give me an audience to talk to."

"Yes," said Una.

Sec. 2

It was hard to leave the kindly Herbert Grays of the flat, but Una made
the break and arranged all her silver toilet-articles--which consisted
of a plated-silver hair-brush, a German-silver nail-file, and a good,
plain, honest rubber comb--on the bureau in Mrs. Lawrence's room.

With the shyness of a girl on her first night in boarding-school, Una
stuck to Mrs. Lawrence's side in the noisy flow of strange girls down to
the dining-room. She was used to being self-absorbed in the noisiest
restaurants, but she was trembly about the knees as she crossed the room
among curious upward glances; she found it very hard to use a fork
without clattering it on the plate when she sat with Mrs. Lawrence and
four strangers, at a table for six.

They all were splendidly casual and wise and good-looking. With no men
about to intimidate them--or to attract them--they made a solid phalanx
of bland, satisfied femininity, and Una felt more barred out than in an
office. She longed for a man who would be curious about her, or cross
with her, or perform some other easy, customary, simple-hearted
masculine trick.

But she was taken into the friendship of the table when Mrs. Lawrence
had finished a harangue on the cardinal sin of serving bean soup four
times in two weeks.

"Oh, shut up, Lawrence, and introduce the new kid!" said one girl.

"You wait till I get through with my