"What a pity!" said Mildred sympathetically. "What a shame!"
"A pity? A shame?" cried Mrs. Belloc, laughing. "Why, my dear, I did it a-purpose."
"On purpose!" exclaimed Mildred.
"Certainly. That was my game. I screamed out with pain—and the scream was no fake, I can tell you. And I fell down by the roadside on a nice grassy spot where no dust would get on me. Well, up comes the old skinflint in his buggy. He climbed down and helped me get off my slipper and stocking. I knew I had him the minute I saw his old face looking at that foot I had fixed up so beautifully."
"How DID you ever think of it?" exclaimed Mildred.
"Go and teach school for ten years in a dull little town, my dear—and look in the glass every day and see your youth fading away—and you'll think of most anything. Well, to make a long story short, the old man took me in the buggy to his house where he lived with his deaf, half-blind old widowed daughter. I had to stay there three weeks. I married him the fourth week. And just two months to a day from the afternoon I sprained my ankle, he gave me fifty dollars a week—all signed and sealed by a lawyer—to go away and leave him alone. I might have stood out for more, but I was too anxious to get to New York. And here I am!" She gazed about the well-furnished room, typical of that almost luxurious house, with an air of triumphant satisfaction. Said she: "I've no patience with a woman who says she can't get on. Where's her brains?"
Mildred was silent. Perhaps it was a feeling of what was hazily in the younger woman's mind and a desire to answer it that led Mrs. Belloc to say further: "I suppose there's some that would criticize my way of getting there. But I want to know, don't all women get there by working men? Only most of them are so stupid that they have to go on living with the man. I think it's low to live with a man you hate."
"Oh, I'm not criticizing anybody," said Mildred.
"I didn't think you were," said Mrs. Belloc. "If I hadn't seen you weren't that kind, I'd not have been so confidential. Not that I'm secretive with anybody. I say and do what I please. Anyone who doesn't like my way or me can take the other side of the street. I didn't come to New York to go in society. I came here to LIVE."
Mildred looked at her admiringly. There were things about Mrs. Belloc that she did not admire; other things—suspected rather than known things—that she knew she would shrink from, but she heartily admired and profoundly envied her utter indifference to the opinion of others, her fine independent way of walking her own path at her own gait.