"You want this tight, but not too
tight, don't you, Julie?" said she. "That can come in a little, still.
No," she resumed aggrievedly, "but I board at a nice place on Fulton
street; the Lancasters, the people that keep it, are just lovely. Mrs.
Lancaster is so motherly and the girls are so jolly; my wash costs me a
dollar a week; I belong to the library; I've got a lovely room; I go to
the theatre when I want to; I buy the clothes I like, and why should I
worry? I know the way Mama keeps house, and I've had enough of it!"
"It's awfully hard," Julia mused, "Marguerite's just doing the same
thing over again. It's just discouraging!"
"Well, you got out of it, and I got out of it," Evelyn said briskly,
"and they call it our luck! Luck? There ain't any such thing," she went
on indignantly. "I'm going to New York for Madame next year--me, to New
York, if you please, and stay at a good hotel, and put more than twenty
thousand dollars into materials and imported wraps and scarfs and so
on--is there any luck to that? There's ten years' slavery, that's what
there is! How much do you suppose you'd have married Jim Studdiford if
you hadn't kept yourself a little above the crowd, and worked away at
the settlement house for years and years?" she demanded.
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