“I guess it just happened so,” the Inger said. “You’ve all come buying good clothes, I bet.”
She did not smile, but sat looking across the room. The wife of the soda fountain man and two women from outside leaned there, talking.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” Lory said, “if the women all come here the way I come—unexpected?”
He did not hear her. He was reading eagerly down the first column of the page:
“Answer Still Delayed. President Not Yet Ready to Give Out Statement. Mass Meeting Resolutions produce Profound Effect. Foreign Pressure Increasing. All-Night Cabinet Meeting Likely—”
“Lord Heavens,” cried the Inger, “why don’t they light in an’ smash ’em—like men?”
She did not hear him. The three women in the corner were looking at her curiously, and she wondered why. As she walked by them toward the door, she thought that she heard one of them whisper:
“She don’t know!”
When she reached the door, she turned back and looked at them.
“Do you live near?” the proprietor’s wife asked her.