“Well, the poor thing,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I made her mad all right! I reckon it was a sin, but I just couldn’t stand her airing ’round here with that cigarette, an’ showings off to us moss-backs. What’d you let her smoke in here for, Julie? You know your mother wouldn’t have liked it.”
“I didn’t know how to stop her,” Julie confessed helplessly.
“Well, I stopped her all right!” Aunt Sadie returned, shaken again by large laughter. “But ain’t the world funny, Julie? Here we’ve all come to look down on smokin’, and feel sort of ashamed of the old women that still do it, when along comes all the young smart Alecks, an’ says it’s the thing to do, an’ if you don’t do it, it just shows you’re right from the backwoods. Now ain’t that funny? If you just live long enough in the world, you’ll see everything turned upside down! But I feel kind of sorry for poor Mis’ Bixby,” she added tolerantly.
“Sorry for her?” Julie’s eyes opened in astonishment.
“Yes,” the other nodded her large gray head. “Don’t you think it’s kind of pitiful to see a grown person putting so much confidence in fine clothes, and thinking she’s so grand showing off with a cigarette? When you’ve been up against real life like I have, that kind of cheap person seems right pitiful.”
“She just stifles me,” Julie said. “She’s so—so big an’ satisfied with herself.”
“Oh, I don’t know’s she’s so satisfied with herself. She wants you to think she is, an’ that’s why she tries to show off so.”
“Well, all the same she does stifle me,” Julie repeated.
“I reckon she does,” Aunt Sadie conceded, surveying Julie’s shrinking make-up with her shrewd and kindly eyes. “She stifles you, honey, an’ I b’lieve she’s just about choked that poor little husband of hers to death.”
“I don’t see why in the world he ever married her,” Julie said.