"And you, too, Vera, you look natural"—but the words almost petered out on her lips. Much of Vera's slender prettiness was gone. She had gone hippy, as the saying is, even her face insidiously wider and coarser pored.
"What are you doing, Vera? Have you kept up your music?"
"Oh no! I'm married!"
There was a little click to the finish of that speech that seemed automatically to lock against the intrusion of old dreams.
"A ten-months-old daughter furnishes me all the music I have time for.
Didn't I read where you got married, Lilly?"
"Yes. You had such a pretty touch on the piano, Vera."
"Why, I don't believe I've opened the piano in six months! Marriage knocks it out of you pretty quick, don't it? And, say, wait until the babies begin to come. I said to him last night, 'Ed, why is marriage like quicksands?' He's no good at conundrums. 'Because it sucks you down,' I said, and he didn't even see the point. But it's a fact, isn't it? Mine is city salesman for the Mound City Shoe Company. What's yours?"
"With Slocum-Hines."
"Lucille Wright is married. And remember Edna Ponscarme? Twins. Nine months to a day. Maybe she wasn't in a hurry! And Stella Loire, the class beauty? She wheels her past our house on her way to market every morning. More like the class dishrag now. Well, well! it does seem funny. Lilly Becker married and settled down like the rest of us, and we had you down in the class prophecy for a famous opera singer. Well, well!"
At Eighteenth Street Lilly left the car, transferring for Union Station. A sudden exultation was racing through her. She sat well forward on her seat, as if that could quicken transit.