“Did I tell you about our housekeeping venture?  Gladys is a private secretary to something down-town and gets an enormous salary, thirty a week.  Phyllis is an artist and has a studio somewhere, and we are great friends.  So we took a cunning little apartment for three months, and we all live together and cook our meals in the baby kitchenette when we feel domestic, and dine out like princesses when we feel lordly.  We have the kitchenette, and a bathroom with two kinds of showers, and a bedroom apiece, though mine is really a closet, and two sitting-rooms, so two of us can have beaus the same night.  If we feel the need of an extra sitting-room—­that is, three beaus a night—­we draw cuts to see who has to resort to the park, or a movie, or the ice-cream parlor, or the kitchenette.  Our time is up next week and we shall return modestly to our boarding-houses.  It is great fun, but it is expensive, and we are so busy.

“We have lovely times.  The girls are—­not like me.  They are really society buds, and wear startling evening gowns and go places in taxis, and are quite the height of fashion.  It is a wonder they put up with me at all.  Still every establishment must have at least one Cinderella.  But let me admit honestly and Methodistically that I do less Cinderelling than either of them.  Gladys darns my stockings, and Phyllis makes my bed fully half the time.

“Anyhow, when Andrew Hedges, millionaire’s son, telephoned that his mother was coming up, they fell upon me, and one rubbed and one fanned, and they both talked at once, and in the end I agreed to leave myself in their hands.  They knew all about millionaires’ sons’ mothers, it seemed, and would fix me up just exactly O. K. right.  Gladys and I are the same size, and she has an exquisite semi-evening gown of Nile green and honest-to-goodness lace which I have long admired humbly from my corner among the ashes.  Just the thing.  I should wear it, and make the millionaire’s son’s mother look like twenty cents.

“Wickedly and wilfully I agreed.  So when the hair was dry enough to manage, they marched me into Gladys’ room—­the only one of the three capable of accommodating three of us—­and turned the mirrors to the wall.  I protested at that.  I wanted to see my progress under their skilful fingers.

“‘No,’ said Phyllis sagely.  ’It looks horrible while it is going on.  You must wait until you are finished, and then burst upon your own enraptured vision.  You will enchant yourself.’

“Gladys seconded her and I assented weakly.  I know I am not naturally weak, Carol, but the thought of a millionaire’s son’s mother affected me very strangely.  It took all the starch out of my knees, and the spine out of my backbone.