In the very beginning they had made a rule about refreshments. "No elaborate serving," they had said. "Just tea or coffee, and toast. And perhaps a strawberry jam or something like that. But that's all. Nobody does it any more." The salads, cakes, and ices of an earlier period were considered vulgar for afternoons. Besides, banting had come in, and these women were nearing thirty; some of them had passed it--an age when fat creeps slyly about the hips and arms and shoulder-blades and stubbornly remains, once ensconced. Still, this rule had slowly degenerated as had the club's original purpose. As they read less during these afternoons they ate more. Beck Schaefer discovered and served a new fruit salad with Hawaiian pineapple and marshmallows as its plot. When next they met at Effie Case's she served her salad in little vivid baskets made of oranges hollowed out, with one half of the skin cut away except for a strip across the top to form the basket's handle. After that there was no more tea and toast. After that, too, the attendance of certain members of the erstwhile Reading Club became more and more irregular and finally ceased altogether. These delinquents were the more serious-minded ones of the group. One became a settlement worker. Another went into the office of an advertising agency and gave all her time and thought to emphasising the desirability of certain breakfast foods, massage creams, chewing gum, and garters. Still another had become a successful Science Practitioner, with an office in the Lake Building and a waiting room always full of claims. As for Lottie Payson--her youth and health, her vigor and courage all went into the service of two old women. Of these the one took selfishly; the other reluctantly, protestingly. The Reading Club had long ago ceased to exist for Lottie. In the morning she drove her mother to market in the ramshackle old electric. Mrs. Payson seldom drove it herself. The peculiar form of rheumatism from which she suffered rendered her left hand almost useless. The electric had been a fine piece of mechanism in its day but years of service had taken the spring from its joints and the life from its batteries. Those batteries now were as uncertain as a tired old heart that may stop its labored beating any moment. A balky starter and an unreliable starter, its two levers needed two strong hands with muscle-control behind them. Besides, one had to be quick. As the Paysons rumbled about in this rheumatic coach, haughty and contemptuous gas cars were always hooting impatiently behind them, nosing them perilously out of the way in the traffic's flood, their drivers frequently calling out ribald remarks about hearses.