The woman sighed. "If only you weren't so young!--I suppose you think I'm a bad lot--bad as they make 'em. But I'm not. I never was. Oh, I know I've done things ladies don't do!--but then ladies ain't often asked to do 'em, dearie. You got to remember that." Joan shrugged, and resigned herself to hear what she was to hear. "I guess you know I wasn't born a lady, nor raised like one, though I've tried.... Well, never mind that!--Pa had a little cash-and-carry grocer store over to Indianapolis, and we lived upstairs, all of us in two rooms.... It was the dirt I couldn't stand, and the crowding. It ain't _right_ for a whole lot of children to live like that, all mixed in so! The others didn't seem to mind, but I was always sort of nice in my ways. Maybe because I was born before Mom took to the coke." "The what?" "Coke--dope, you know. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her going, poor Mom! and I'm glad she had it." "Was your mother an invalid?" asked Joan, a little startled by this breadth of tolerance. "Oh, no. But kids come along once a year regular, and she wasn't ever, so to speak, well. I made up my mind when I wasn't more than ten never to get myself in the fix Ma was in!... My two older sisters felt that way, too, I guess. They always had fellows, but not the sort that'd do to marry. Men like Pa, you know. No 'count--One of the girls worked at a dressmaker's, and sewed till her eyes were red all the time, and her shoulders stooped and she coughed. The other--well, the other didn't keep straight, dearie. Awful few of the girls I knew did keep straight. But Mame went into one of those houses--you know?--and had a lot of swell clothes, and jewelry and all. I remember all us younger ones used to envy her. But she didn't last long at it, and she died--horrible." Effie May's eyes were fixed on strange places, and the tragedy of the world was in them. "She used to be a pretty thing, Mame; and sweet, too.... Well, it seemed to me there ought to be _something_ better for a girl than marrying a man like Pa and slaving, or getting a good job like Jule's and slaving, or going wrong like Mame and slaving worst of all! Once when I was out delivering dresses for the dressmaker where Jule worked, I saw what I was looking for. Society women. Ladies. "That's what I'm going to be," I says to myself, "a Society woman! (I was about twelve then.) You don't have to work, you live in a fine house and wear swell clothes, and you can keep as straight as you like. "The others used to laugh at me, but Mom never did. She was real ambitious for her children, Mom was. 'You keep on thinkin' so and you'll get there,' she used to say. 'You're smart and pretty enough for anything!' And so I was, then!" Effie May gave a sigh.