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Rh dollars was what kept you from goin' stark crazy mad."

"Well, it ain't!" she kind of snapped at me. "It's myself and my own makin'-up-my-mind that's keepin' me from going crazy mad. A person can stand what they've got to stand if they've got a mind to, fifteen dollars, or no fifteen dollars," she says.

"That's the way to talk, Isabel," I replied, full of admiration. "Will-power is a lot more use to anybody in keepin' sane and steady than fifteen dollars is."

But she wasn't goin' to let me praise her, if she could help it. "I don't know 'bout that," she spurts out, "but I know fifteen dollars is a lot too much to pay for a bottle of rat-poison, and it's a lot too little for a girl to go to the bad on, if she prefers that way of puttin' an end to things she thinks she can't stand. At least it's a lot too little for a girl like me, with no face and no figure, and no clothes to cover up how ugly she is." She gave a kind of snort, meant to be a laugh, I guess. Then tossed up her head much as to say, "I don't care if I have shocked yer!"

She didn't shock me a mite. She wasn't the first girl I'd heard talk rank and extreme to cover up a lot of fine qualities inside, which they wouldn't let you get a peep at for anything. I