"There's a hog for you," exclaimed Fannie. She indicated a stout man in shirt-sleeves. He had his coat over one arm, his collar and necktie protruding from the breast pocket. His wife, a meagre woman, panted at his side. She carried two heavy children, one of them not yet born.
Half the people carried paper parcels or little suitcases made of straw in which were bathing-suits and sandwiches. It would be low tide, but between floating islands of swill and sewage there would be water, salt, wet, and cool.
"My mother," said Fannie, "doesn't like me to come to these places alone. It's a real nice crowd uses Pelham Park, but there's always a sprinkling of freshies."
"Is that why you invited me?" said Lila gayly. Inwardly she flattered herself to think that she had been asked for herself alone. But Fannie's answer had in it something of a slap in the face.
"Well," said this one, "mother forbade me to come alone. But I do want to get better acquainted with you. Honest."
They rested for a while sitting on a stone wall in the shade of a tree.
"My mother," said Fannie grandly, "thinks everybody's rotten, including me. My God!" she went on angrily, "do me and you work six days of the week only to be bossed about on the seventh? I tell you I won't stand it much longer. I'm going to cut loose. Nothing but work, work, work, and scold, scold, scold."
"If I had all the pretty things you've got," said Lila gently, "I don't believe I'd complain."
Fannie blushed. "It's hard work and skimping does it," she said. "Ever think of marrying, kid?"