Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/163

 keeping a budget, walking to Two Hundred and Seventh Street to get things cheaper, reading newspapers instead of magazines, and trying to cut her own hair.

It was February now. The days of sleet and cold, icy winds were separated by vagrant, sweet-smelling hours that came mysteriously and fled back to Never-Never Land. When they were gone you didn't believe that they had happened, but then again there was the strange breath of dewy violets and woodlands, and you felt somehow happier even if you had been fooled.

Dot was doing a lot of sewing. She had heard somewhere that it was bad luck to prepare very lavishly for a baby. She worried a little but could not resist the temptation of buying unbelievably narrow lace and phantomfragile muslin despite the extravagance.

Eddie watched her sew. What was she doing that for? She didn't want the kid. He was curious. "What are you doing that for?" he asked.

She looked up at him in amazement. "What am I doing it for? The kid can't go naked, can he? You can't bring him home from the hospital naked. And so long as he's got to have clothes, this is the cheapest way to do it. It don't cost me over a dollar apiece to make the dresses myself."

The next time he had a few minutes to himself, Eddie looked in an infants' furnishing store. He saw dresses for forty-nine cents which certainly must be good enough for some people's babies or they wouldn't be selling them. Guess Dot didn't know that kid's dresses could be bought so cheap. Eddie chuckled. He wouldn't tell her. Why the devil shouldn't Dot make his clothes? Wasn't he, Eddie, going to make the kid a high chair all by hand? A good joke on Dot, that. He wouldn't tell her.

Funny how many things he was keeping to himself. He couldn't tell her this and he couldn't tell her that, because