it's Corthell and then Landry, and next it will be somebody else.
Laura regularly mortifies me; a great, grown-up girl like that,
flirting, and letting every man she meets think that he's just the
one particular one of the whole earth. It's not good form. And
Landry--as if he didn't know we've got more to do now than just to
dawdle and dawdle. I could slap him. I like to see a man take life
seriously and try to amount to something, and not waste the best
years of his life trailing after women who are old enough to be his
grandmother, and don't mean that it will ever come to anything."

In her room, in the front of the house, Laura was partly undressed
when Mrs. Cressler knocked at her door. The latter had put on a
wrapper of flowered silk, and her hair was bound in "invisible
nets."

"I brought you a dressing-gown," she said. She hung it over the foot
of the bed, and sat down on the bed itself, watching Laura, who
stood before the glass of the bureau, her head bent upon her breast,
her hands busy with the back of her hair. From time to time the
hairpins clicked as she laid them down in the silver trays close at
hand. Then putting her chin in the air, she shook her head, and the
great braids, unlooped, fell to her waist.

"What pretty hair you have, child," murmured Mrs. Cressler. She was
settling herself for a long talk with her protege. She had much to
tell, but now that they had the whole night before them, could
afford to take her time.

Between the two women the conversation began slowly, with detached
phrases and observations that did not call necessarily for