"That's a good boy!" and Lan gave my hand such a squeeze that it almost made me cry out with the pain of it.
"Lan," as we walked along, "can you tell me more about Phoebe.... Aunt Rachel told me some, but—"
"Oh, she ended up by running away with a drummer ... she hadn't been gone long when her ma got word from her asking her to forgive her ... that she'd run off with a man she loved, and was to be married to him pretty soon.... Phoebe gave no address, but the letter had a Pittsburgh postmark....
"A month ... six months went by. Then a letter came in a strange hand. The girl that wrote it said that she was Phoebe's 'Roommate.'" Lan paused here, and gave me a significant look, then resumed:
"Paul went down to bring the body home, and found she'd been buried already. They were too poor to have it dug up and brought home."
"It seems that the man that took Phoebe off was nothing but a pimp!"
Suicide: early one Sunday morning; early, for girls of their profession, the two girls, Phoebe and her roommate were sitting in their bedrooms in kimonos.
"What a nice Sunday," Phoebe had said, looking out at the window. "Jenny," she continued to her roommate, "I have a feeling I'd like to go to church this morning...."