Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/81

 Dot sat up briskly. No sudden realization of this day's significance dawned upon her. She had been conscious even in her sleep that this day was to be different from all others.

"Is Eddie here?" she asked.

The little boy shook his head gravely. "No one's here but me and Mamma and you."

Dot smiled. Of course Eddie wasn't here. He didn't know that she had spent the night at Edna's.

"Where's your mother?"

"Mamma's gone to the drug store to telephone. She says she's gonna tell your boss that you're very sick. Are you very sick, Dottie? Mamma says no use in you losing your job just because you lost your head. Did you lose your head, Dottie? Don't look like you did."

"Hush, darling," said Dot. "You talk too much."

"So do you and Mamma," said Floyd, in the tone of one who remarks on an interesting coincidence. "Why do we all talk too much?"

Dot lay down again. No use asking Floyd to go away while she dressed. She would have to wait for Edna to return and call off her child. Meanwhile it was pleasant just to lie there and think of Eddie.

The door at the end of the hall banged, and Floyd ran to meet his mother as though she had just returned from a tour of the Far East.

Dot jumped from the bed and slipped into a kimono which she found on a chair beside her. The storks flying across the crinkly material with gay disregard of what is expected in a stork's flight were supposed to conjure up visions of sparkling-eyed geishas and the flowery kingdom, but Hans Andersen was still too fresh in Dot's memory. It was Hans Andersen of whom Dot thought while Edna repeated her conversation with Dot's boss.

"I said to him, "Miss Haley has a terrible toothache and