“I started out to preach the gospel: all that sort of thing,” drawled a Miss Simmonds from beneath a hat that, if she had paid for it, would have cost her five guineas. “Now my chief purpose in life is to tickle silly women into spending twice as much upon their clothes as their husbands can afford, bamboozling them into buying any old thing that our Advertising Manager instructs me to boom.” “To tell the truth,” he answered, “that’s exactly what I’ve been saying to myself. I shan’t be any good. I don’t see myself sticking a bayonet into even a German. Unless he happened to be abnormally clumsy. I tried to shoot a rabbit once. I might have done it if the little beggar, instead of running away, hadn’t turned and looked at me.”!

The twilight was fading as she left the office. She turned northward, choosing a broad, ill-lighted road. It did not matter which way she took. She wanted to think; or, rather, to dream. “A little child is coming,” she confided to Joan. She was quite excited about it.

“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.” Joan did not answer. “Yes,” answered Joan. “I’m a journalist.”