worth the work it had been to get Cornelia McMillan to give it to her. She had tried it on "just for fun," and exclaimed over it, and flattered Cornelia, and talked about being poor, until Cornelia, half kind, half contemptuous, had said: "Take it. I don't want it. No, go ahead. I've worn it so much I'm tired of it." Evelyn was sick of this hinting for presents, hinting for invitations, but she and her mother had had to do it so much that it was easier than it used to be. Anyway, the coat was a hundred times more becoming to her than to fat Cornelia with her sallow skin.
Mrs. Prather was still in bed, propped up by pink-satin pillows covered with lace, when Evelyn went in to say good morning. She wore a net cap to keep her waves in place, a rubber chin strap, a pink-chiffon jacket edged with swan's-down, and rubber gloves. Her breakfast tray was on the dressing table, rimmed with pushed-back silver and crystal, a heap of cigarette stubs, big square bottles of green and amber perfumes, a vase of nearly dead flowers, and a copy of If Winter Comes, which she could not read in public because it made her cry so that the mascara washed off her lashes and zigzagged sootily down her cheeks. An empty coffee cup, a bit of sausage, a bit of griddle cake with maple-syrup streaks, buttery crumbs, and grape skins, explained the need of the pink rubber corsets waiting on a chair.
The cabin smelled of fruit from all the mauve and gilt steamer baskets, with their pears and apples and
