Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/263

 "I know; where you have kids. Sure, I want that; ever see a girl, who's any good, wouldn't like one? But what do you do to a kid, if you get 'em without marryin'; and what do you get yourself into if you do?"

"Do what?" asked Marjorie.

"Marry. The set-up on the other side of the sketch's got to be a man, hasn't he? A bird down at the Sunday Evening Club—I stepped in there once—said a mouthful about marriage. Said if marriage meant anything, it meant trust. Can you imagine me trustin' a man—one man—any man—after what I've seen? You seemed to been glimpsin' some unposed pictures of Mr. Man yourself, recently; what'd you think 'bout what you been seein' of the so-called human race?"

Marjorie did not tell, for she could not yet take her bitter thoughts lightly, like Clara, in these days when the vestiges of the privileges and the protection which had been hers in the big home in Evanston were vanishing and her struggles were beginning to mark Marjorie Conway, and when men, with eyes eager for such signs, were subtly or more openly watching the progress of discouragement of this gently reared girl who had been cast upon herself.

Nothing overt happened; but, in her rounds of business, tiny, almost indescribable things were done to try her; sometimes questions asked, proper in words, with a tone just off; sometimes a hand unnecessarily brushing hers or put over hers in the process of taking a sample from her fingers; often only the ogle of sensuous eyes. When she began to notice that the men who never subjected her to this were the poorer and "lower class" of the prospects she approached, and when she