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 the women in the world if they came and asked me, Sue. It pains like hell, but it's over fast and you forget it."

"Have you forgotten?"

"Almost. If you'd have come tomorrow, I'd have probably told you that it wasn't as bad as a headache."

"How about our mutual friend? She hasn't forgotten."

"I don't know what to think about her, Sue. I'm kind of afraid that she's just a mean woman who feels important when she's scaring people. She's too mean to even say that the pain was worth it, and it is, Sue, it is."

"My mother says it's nothing," Sue offered.

Dot's lips parted in a smile of reminiscence. "Your mother has done a good job of forgetting, Sue. And so will I, and so will you. You have a couple of hours of pain, and then it's all over forever and you have your baby. Why shouldn't it hurt? Gee, Sue, everything that's worth having hurts in some way or other."

"I guess you're right, Dot. It didn't hurt at all to get Pat."

Dot looked at Sue a moment more and then turned away. Why was it that other people were always finished with a serious subject long before she was? Other people were always quick to turn back to wisecracks. Maybe that was why she didn't have many friends. Too serious, perhaps. She'd have to snap out of it. Be more flip. She laughed a little at her thoughts. She'd start to be flip as soon as she had her son raised. A mere matter of eighteen or twenty years.

The luncheon tray came in, and Sue got up from her perch on the window sill. "I'll be going, Dot," she said. "I only dropped in to tell you my news. Should I come up to your house tonight?"

"If you want to. To tell the truth, Sue, I'll be going to bed very early."

"Well, I'll come in for fifteen or twenty minutes."