“Did you have a good time, dearie?”
“As good as I expected.” The girl’s tone was rather pathetically tired.
“Any one bring you home?”
“No, I walked—for exercise.”
Her mother heard no sarcasm. “It’s a nice night out,” she said. “I just came in myself. I went to the White Sale at Barney’s and then dropped in at the Majestic—Dorothy Danby in ‘Other Men’s Wives,’ you know. It wasn’t very good—not worth a quarter.”
Fliss must have had a swift vision of the women who did not go to see Dorothy Danby—of Mrs. Warner dealing at long range with her dinner parties. Her face was dark and bitter.
“I hate this not being anybody—why aren’t we somebody?” she broke out.
Her mother looked daunted. “I’m sure you go everywhere you want to—going to stay at the Spragues’ to-morrow night, out all this afternoon, and there’s that swell dance at the Mortons’ next week—I think you have a good time. It’s not my fault your father hasn’t more money.”
“It’s nobody’s fault—nothing is. But that doesn’t make it easier. A girl can’t do it all alone—she needs houses, automobiles, if she is to get anywhere.” She stopped and looked at the stupid figure in front of her, which could not seem to understand its own failure as a mother. “It’s just that I’m tired and I think I’m getting a cold and it’s so darn lonesome with all the girls away. That musicale was the deadest thing you ever saw.”
She went to the kitchen and watched the chops sizzling, drearily, but none the less with a certain interest. After all, the walk home had been exercise.