"Now that we've tried 'em all on," said Susan with a short and bitter laugh, "let's dress in our dirty rags again and go."
"Oh, I couldn't imagine myself in any of those things—could you?" cried Etta.
"Yes," answered Susan. "And better."
"You were brought up to have those things, I know."
Susan shook her head. "But I'm going to have them."
"When?" said Etta, scenting romance. "Soon?"
"As soon as I learn," was Susan's absent, unsatisfactory reply.
Etta had gone back to her own misery and the contrasts to it. "I get mad through and through," she cried, "when I think how all those things go to some women—women that never did work and never could. And they get them because they happen to belong to rich fathers and husbands or whoever protects them. It isn't fair! It makes me crazy!"
Susan gave a disdainful shrug. "What's the use of that kind of talk!" said she. "No use at all. The thing is, we haven't got what we want, and we've got to get it—and so we've got to learn how."
"I can't think of anything but the cold," said Etta. "My God, how cold I am! There isn't anything I wouldn't do to get warm. There isn't anything anybody wouldn't do to get warm, if they were as cold as this. It's all very well for warm people to talk——"