Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/238

 "He ain't ever going to grow old. He said so, and if you'd see him you'd know."

Jane felt within her the stirring of curiosity. But she put it down sternly. She had no time for it.

"Tommy," she said, "I've been thinking. I've got to earn more money, and I want your help."

Tommy's faithful eyes held a look of doglike affection.

"Oh, if I can" he quavered.

"I've got to get ahead." Jane was breathless. Her eyes shone.

"I've got to get ahead, Tommy. I can't live all my life like this." She held up the pink strip. "Even if I am a woman, there ought to be something more than making rompers for the rest of my days."

"You might," said the infatuated Tommy, "marry."

"Marry? Marry whom?"

Tommy wished that he might shout "Me!" from the housetops. But he knew the futility of it.

"I shall never marry," she said, "until I find somebody different from anything I've ever seen."

Jane's ideas of men were bounded largely by the weakness of her father and the crudeness of men like Henry Bittinger, Atwood Jones and others of their kind. She didn't consider Tommy at all. 232