"O, foolish, foolish anties!" I chided them, "stop
wearing yourselves out this way. Don't you know that the
game isn't worth the candle, and that you'll give
yourselves nervous jim-jams and then you'll have to go
home to be patched up? Look at me! I'm a horrible
example."

But they only bustled on, heedless of my advice, and
showed their contempt by crawling over me as I lay there
like a lady Gulliver.

Oh, I played what they call a heavy thinking part.
It was not only the ants that came in for lectures. I
preached sternly to myself.

"Well, Dawn old girl, you've made a beautiful mess of
it. A smashed-up wreck at twenty-eight! And what have
you to show for it? Nothing! You're a useless pulp,
like a lemon that has been squeezed dry. Von Gerhard was
right. There must be no more newspaper work for you, me
girl. Not if you can keep away from the fascination of
it, which I don't think you can."

Then I would fall to thinking of those years of
newspapering--of the thrills of them, and the ills of
them. It had been exhilarating, and educating, but
scarcely remunerative. Mother had never approved. Dad
had chuckled and said that it was a curse descended upon
me from the terrible old Kitty O'Hara, the only old maid