“Mother,” she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, “we’ve got to change things around here.  It isn’t fair to Dan, for one thing.  We’ve got to get a girl to do the work.  And to do that we’ll have to rent a room.”

She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.

“I’ve never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I’m not going to let the neighbors begin looking down on me now.”

“Now, listen, mother—­”

“Go on away, Edie.”

“But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all but three evenings a week.  I don’t know, but Mr. Cameron at the store isn’t satisfied where he is.  He’s got a dog, and they haven’t any yard.  We’ve got a yard.”

“I won’t be bothered with any dog,” said the querulous voice, from the darkness.

With a gesture of despair the girl turned away.  What was the use, anyhow?  Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan.  Only let them let her go on, too.  She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the whole rotten mess.  But they wouldn’t let her.

Her mood of disgust continued the next morning.  When, at eleven o’clock, Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him somberly but without disdain.  Lou or somebody else, what did it matter?  So long as something took her for a little while away from the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulous inmates.

“What’s got into you lately, Edith?” he inquired, lowering his voice.  “You used to be the best little pal ever.  Now the other day, when I called up—­”

“Had the headache,” she said laconically.  “Well?”

“Want to play around this evening?”

She hesitated.  Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that night, and her face hardened.  Had any one told Edith that she was beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his sentimental whistling, she would have laughed.  But he gave her something that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect.  It was perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her to care more for herself.

But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.

“I might, depending on what you’ve got to offer.”

“I’ve got a car now, Edith.  I’m not joking.  There was a lot of outside work, and the organization came over.  I’ve been after it for six months.  We can have a ride, and supper somewhere.  How’s the young man with the wooden leg?”

“If you want to know I’ll call him out and let him tell you.”

“Quick, aren’t you?” He smiled down at where she stood, firmly entrenched behind a show case.  “Well, don’t fall in love with him.  That’s all.  I’m a bad man when I’m jealous.”

He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him.  He did not know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of his invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and of the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.