“There!  That’s comfort!  Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of our flat to sit on for just an hour.  Ma has flower boxes all round it, and I bought one of those hammock couches last year.  When I come home from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with egg sauce!” She relaxed into an armchair.  “Tell me, do you always talk to men that way?”

Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window.

“They don’t bother me much, as a rule.”

“Max Tack isn’t a bad boy.  He never wastes much time on me.  I don’t buy his line.  Max is all business.  Of course he’s something of a smarty, and he does think he’s the first verse and chorus of Paris-by-night; but you can’t help liking him.”

“Well, I can,” said Sophy Gold, and her voice was a little bitter, “and without half trying.”

“Oh, I don’t say you weren’t right.  I’ve always made it a rule to steer clear of the ax-grinders myself.  There are plenty of girls who take everything they can get.  I know that Max Tack is just padded with letters from old girls, beginning ‘Dear Kid,’ and ending, ’Yours with a world of love!’ I don’t believe in that kind of thing, or in accepting things.  Julia Harris, who buys for three departments in our store, drives up every morning in the French car that Parmentier’s gave her when she was here last year.  That’s bad principle and poor taste.  But—­Well, you’re young; and there ought to be something besides business in your life.”

Sophy Gold turned her face from the window toward Miss Morrissey.  It served to put a stamp of finality on what she said: 

“There never will be.  I don’t know anything but business.  It’s the only thing I care about.  I’ll be earning my ten thousand a year pretty soon.”

“Ten thousand a year is a lot; but it isn’t everything.  Oh, no, it isn’t.  Look here, dear; nobody knows better than I how this working and being independent and earning your own good money puts the stopper on any sentiment a girl might have in her; but don’t let it sour you.  You lose your illusions soon enough, goodness knows!  There’s no use in smashing ’em out of pure meanness.”

“I don’t see what illusions have got to do with Max Tack,” interrupted Sophy Gold.

Miss Morrissey laughed her fat, comfortable chuckle.

“I suppose you’re right, and I guess I’ve been getting a lee-tle bit nosey; but I’m pretty nearly old enough to be your mother.  The girls kind of come to me and I talk to ’em.  I guess they’ve spoiled me.  They—­”

There came a smart rapping at the door, followed by certain giggling and swishing.  Miss Morrissey smiled.

“That’ll be some of ’em now.  Just run and open the door, will you, like a nice little thing?  I’m too beat out to move.”