Then both of them laughed and Lily forgot everything, even the blow with the fist, at being treated so like a lady.
“If I was married,” she said to the Three Graces, “I should like to go shopping all day long and have fine dresses, a gold watch and no bike!”
The Three Graces, with their heroic strength, had no thought of such luxuries. Thea told Lily of her successes in America:
“Five pullings-up with one arm at Boston. Six at ’Frisco. Eight when we got back to New York! Eight, Lily! And to-day....”
“And your lover in America, tell me about your lover ...” interrupted Lily, pressing Thea’s arm.
“Talk low,” said Thea, looking back at Nunkie, who was walking behind with Pa. “Nunkie is furious with him. If he ever meets him! He says it’s disgraceful, not writing to me, after asking leave to. It’s an insult that ought to disgust me with men for good and all, Nunkie says.”
She told Lily everything, her unhappiness at first, for she loved him. Lily, with her little nose in the air, sniffed those love stories, gulped them down, so to speak, with an instinctive movement of the lips.
“And did you write to him?”
“I wrote to him, but he never answered. Oh, if Nunkie knew! He forbids us to write, because writing, you know, Lily, puts out the muscles of the arms, interferes with the pullings-up, Nunkie says....”
