It wasn't just selling four-dollar candlesticks and
crickets and blue glass flower-holders. I was beginning to get real jobs
to do--big jobs for big people, and it was exciting. That made it easier
to forget. I was beginning to think that some day I'd earn my way into
the open big sort of life that your new friends have had for nothing.
"And then, a week ago, there came the doctor and cut off that chance.
Oh, there's no way out, I know that! That's the way the pattern was cut,
I suppose, in the beginning. I've always suspected the cosmic Dressmaker
of having a sense of humor. Now I know it. I'm the lucky one who isn't
going to have to wade through the slush any more. I'm to go out to
southern California and live in a nice little bungalow and be a nurse
for five or ten years, and then I'm going to be left alone in genteel
poverty, without an interest in the world, and too tired to make any.
And I'll probably live to eighty.
"And yet,"--she leaned suddenly forward, and the passion that had been
suppressed in her voice till now, leaped up into flame--"and yet, can
you tell me what I could have done differently? I've lived the kind of
life they preach about--a life of noble sacrifice.
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