"Well, if you aren't crazy about Sammy, why not chuck him? Marriage isn't the last resource for a girl like you. You've got just as many wits to live on as the next one. This town's full of young women no better-looking than either of us, and with even less intelligence, who manage pretty comfortably, thank you, on the living the world owes them."
"Sally Manvers!" cried the Southern girl, scandalised, "what a way to talk!"
"Oh, all right," said the other indifferently. "Where's Mary Warden?"
"Lyric Hall-rehearsing."
"Lucky Mary!"
Lucy Spode looked up in astonishment. "Lucky!" she protested; "dancing till she's ready to drop, in this awful heat, and no pay for rehearsals!"
"All the same," Sally contended, "she's got some chance, some right to hope for better things. She's an understudy, and her principal might fall ill--or something. That's better than marrying a man you don't care for--or clerking at Huckster's for seven dollars a week."
"Cat," said Miss Spode dispassionately. "Who's been mussing your fur?"
"Life."
The steel pen was poised again while Lucy Spode surveyed Sally Manvers suspiciously.