Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and her
little mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow.

"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard as
nails."

"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones who
aren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've got
to play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as well
have the game."

"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one more
wife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if I
had to play it on a South Dakota farm."

"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in a
copy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything is
worth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin.
I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stock
of myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her arms
in a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There's
not been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd have
married me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow,
too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future to
ladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was a
pretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been pretty
lucky in the long run, I guess."

"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette
in the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you a