men's heavy things drying before the stove; men's stories and talk and laughter. From this home, Ellen had come to Chicago.
Lem Dewitt, Di's father, was an automobile mechanic with a job, usually, in the garage at Hoster. He had been, once, the town beau and had married the town belle. Pansy was a faded, querulous beauty in this day, recognized by old suitors, who returned to town, by her auburn hair. Lem was lazy and let the place run down. It was a one-story, clapboard cottage, originally white, weathered to dirty gray and streaked by rusty water dripping through the rotted gutters. The roof wanted mending; the rooms wanted paper and paint; the flues wanted cleaning. Pansy complained about it all and herself lay late abed, "did" her dishes and housework in boudoir cap and a cheap, gaudy kimono. She had time to manicure her pink hands and massage her sagging cheeks but not to scrub the floor.
From this home, Diana, the eldest child, had fled to Detroit, whence she had come to Chicago to settle her dainty, dependent, man-desired self upon Ellen. In the two years since she had forsaken Hoster, Di never had returned; and she corresponded, when at all, upon picture postcards.
Her mother's letters were chiefly complaints, in response to which Di impulsively deprived herself of a flimsy blouse, worn a bit but not yet ready to be discarded, and mailed it home; or she would slip into parcel post a pair of new gloves or silk stockings from the constantly accruing meed of her admirers.
It was ridiculous to suppose that Di would go home or
