"Let the dishes be, Angie—I'll do 'em in the morning. I wonder if it's raining yet? It's sure too cold to wear my old black. I'll have to wear my tan."
Rain beat a fine tattoo against the windows. Tillie crossed and peered anxiously out, cupping her eyes in her hand and straining through the reflecting window-pane at the undistinguishable sky; her little wren-like movements and eyes were full of nerves.
"It'll be all right with an umbrella," she urged—"eh, Angie?"
"Yes."
Tillie hurried to the little one-window room. There were two carmine spots high on her cheek-bones; as she dressed herself before a wavy mirror her lips were open and parted like a child's, and the breath came warm and fast between them.
"I'll be home early to-night, Angie. You sleep on the davenport. I don't mind the lumps in the cot."
She frizzed her front hair with a curling-iron she heated in the fan of the gas-flame, and combed out the little spring-tight curls until they framed her face like a fuzzy halo. Her pink lawn waist came high up about her neck in a trig, tight-fitting collar; and when she finally pressed on her sailor hat, and slid into her warm-looking tan jacket the small magenta bow on her left coat-lapel heaved up and down with her bosom.
"Say," she called through the open doorway, "I wish you'd see those seventy-nine-cent gloves, Angie—already split! How'd yours wear, huh?"
Silence.
"You care if I wear yours to-night, Angie?"