"Curious old world, isn't it?" she said between puffs. "Here we are the three of us—snug and nice, having seven kinds of hell-fire water and not having to pay for it; three meals a day and afternoon tea ditto, good beds and steam-heat ditto—and four days ago where were we? Pierce, you were hocking your clothes! Doc, you—"
"Washing dishes!" he said. "I never knew before how extravagant it is to have a saucer under a cup!"
"And I!" she went on, "I, Julia Summers, was staring at a ceiling in the Finleyville hotel, with a face that looked like a toy balloon."
"And now," said Doctor Barnes, "you are more beautiful than ever. I am a successful physician—oh, lord, Julia, if you'd hear me faking lines in my part! And my young friend here—Pierce—Julia, Pierce has now become a young reprobate named Dicky Carter, and may the Lord have mercy on his soul!"
I tried to get out in time, but I was too late. I saw her rise, saw the glass of water at her elbow roll over and smash on the floor, and saw her clutch wildly at Mr. Pierce's shoulder.
"Not—not DICKY Carter!" she cried.
"Richard—they call him Dick," Mr. Pierce said uneasily, and loosened her fingers from his coat.
Oh, well, everybody knows it now—how she called Mr. Dick everything in the calendar, and then began to cry and said nobody would ever know what she'd been through with, and the very dress she had on was a part of the trousseau she'd had made, and what with the dressmaker's bills—
Suddenly she stopped crying.
"Where is he, anyhow?" she demanded.