Mame placed the backs of her hands on her hips, breathed inward like a soprano testing her diaphragm, and leaned against a wooden spool-case. "It _is_ rainin' like sixty, ain't it? Say, can you beat it? Watch the old man put Myrtle out in the aisle at the mackintosh-table--there! Didn't I tell you! Gee! I bet she could chew a diamond, she's so mad." "She ain't as mad as me; but I'm going to wear my tan if it gets soaked." Tillie sold a packet of needles and regarded the patch of window with a worried pucker on her small, wren-like face. "Honest, ain't it a joke, Til?--you havin' the nerve to answer that ad and all! You better be pretty white to me, or I'll snitch! I'll tell Angie you're writin' pink notes to Box 25, _Evenin' News_--Mr. Box 25! Say, can you beat it!" Mame laughed in her throat, smoothed her frizzed blonde hair, sold a paper of pins and an emery heart. "Like fun you'll tell Angie! I got it all fixed to tell her I'm going to the picture-show with you and George to-night." "Before I'd let a old grouch like her lord it over me! It ain't like she was your sister or relation, or something--but just because you live together. Nix on that for mine." "She don't think a girl's got a right to be young or nothin'! Look at me--a regular stick-at-home. Gee! a girl's got to have something." "Sure she does! Ain't that what I've been tryin' to preach to you ever since we've been chumming together? You ain't a real old maid yet--you got real takin' ways about you and all; you ought to be havin' a steady of your own." "Don't I know it?" "Look how you got to do now--just because she never lets you go to dances or nothin' with us girls." "She ain't never had it, and she don't want me to have it." "Say, tell it to the Danes! She ain't got them snappy black eyes of hers for nothin'. Whatta you live with her for? There ain't a girl up in the corsets that's got any use for her." "She's been pretty white to me, just the samey--raised me and all when I didn't have no one. She's got her faults; but I kinda got the habit of livin' with her now--I got to stick." "Gee! even a stepmother like Carrie's'll let her have fun once in a while. It's Angie's own fault that you got to meet 'em in drug stores and take chances on ads and all." "I'm just answerin' that ad for fun--I ain't in earnest." "I've always been afraid of matrimonial ads and things like that. You know I was the first one to preach your gettin' out and gettin' spry--that's me all over! I believe in bein' spry; but I always used to say to maw before I was keepin' steady with George, 'Ads ain't safe.'" "I ain't afraid." "Lola Flint, over in the jewelry, answered one once--'Respectable young man would like to make the acquaintance of a genteel young lady; red hair preferred.' And when she seen him he had only one eye, and his left arm shot off."