"Ma, if you don't quit raving and clear on up to bed, I'll pack myself out to-night yet, and then you'll have a few things to set right with the Lord. Go on up, now." "I--" "Go on--you hear?" Mrs. Scogin went then, tiredly and quite bent forward, toward a flight of stairs that rose directly from the parlor, opened a door leading up into them, the frozen breath of unheated regions coming down. "Quick--close that door, ma!" "Come to see a body, Hanna, when she ain't here. She won't stay at home, like a God-fearin' woman ought to." "Light the gas-heater up there, if you expect me to come to bed. I'm used to steam-heated flats, not barns." "She's a sassy girl, Hanna. Your John a deacon and hers lies molderin' in his grave, a sui--" Mrs. Scogin Bevins flung herself up, then, a wave of red riding up her face. "If you don't go up--if you--don't! Go--now! Honest, you're gettin' so luny you need a keeper. Go--you hear?" The door shut slowly, inclosing the old figure. She relaxed to the couch, trying to laugh. "Luny!" she said. "Bats! Nobody home!" "I like your hair like that, Kittie. It looks swell." "It's easy. I'll fix it for you some time. It's the vampire swirl. All the girls are wearing it." "Remember the night, Kit, we was singin' duets for the Second Street Presbyterian out at Grody's Grove and we got to hair-pullin' over whose curls was the longest?" "Yeh. I had on a blue dress with white polka-dots." "That was fifteen years ago. Remember Joe Claiborne promised us a real stage-job, and we opened a lemonade-stand on our front gate to pay his commission in advance?" They laughed back into the years. "O Lord! them was days! Seems to me like fifty years ago." "Not to me, Kittie. You've done things with your life since then. I 'ain't." "You know what I've always told you about yourself, Hanna. If ever there was a fool girl, that was Hanna Long. Lord! if I'm where I am on my voice, where would you be?" "I was a fool." "I could have told you that the night you came running over to tell me." "There was no future in this town for me, Kit. Stenoggin' around from one office to another. He was the only real provider ever came my way." "I always say if John Burkhardt had shown you the color of real money! But what's a man to-day on just a fair living? Not worth burying yourself in a dump like this for. No, sirree. When I married Ed, anyways I thought I smelled big money. I couldn't see ahead that his father'd carry out his bluff and cut him off. But what did you have to smell--a feed-yard in a hole of a town! What's the difference whether you live in ten rooms like yours or in four like this as long as you're buried alive? A girl can always do that well for herself after she's took big chances. You could be Lord knows where now if you'd 'a' took my advice four years ago and lit out when I did."