I don’t like to recall those years, the pinching over lunches in town, the constant problem of clothes, the moving from one office to another. Somehow during that period I managed to pay Miss Mattie and to keep myself clothed after a fashion. And, of course, early in that interval I fell in love.

I can laugh at that now. Bill Sterling was a local boy and our best doctor. He was fourteen years older than I was at nineteen, a big, broad-shouldered man, certainly not handsome; but I took the thing sickeningly hard. I invented excuses to call at his office, and walked past his house at night on the chance of seeing him getting in or out of his car.

The only excuse for recalling that is that Bill plays his own part in this story. As for the love affair, Bill solved the question one day in his own characteristic fashion. He had stuck a thermometer in my mouth, eyed it gravely when he removed it, and then leaned back in his office chair and smiled at me.

“Let’s have this out, Pat,” he said. “I can’t go on sending you bills for nothing. You’re as healthy a specimen as I ever saw.”

I suppose I changed color, for he leaned over and patted my hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re great friends, aren’t we? I like you and you like me. But the next time I put a thermometer in your mouth it had better show something, and holding it against a hot-water bottle is barred!”

It was a year before I could look at him without blushing, but it was good medicine. For a long time now he had been devoted to Lydia. I think they would have married, but Audrey did not like him. It was to have frightful repercussions, that dislike of Audrey’s for Bill Sterling.

He came in that night before I left Lydia’s. He kissed Lydia matter-of-factly and gave me a bang on the shoulder.

“Well, how did you like Maud?”

“I liked her, Bill. Thanks for telling her about me.”

“I told her you were a model of ability, tact, and diplomacy,” he said modestly. “Also that you would let her Tony alone, being a spinster at heart. She couldn’t wait to get you. How’s the party coming along?”

I left soon afterward, but I did not go back at once to Miss Mattie’s. I drove slowly up and down the streets, looking at the houses, and wondering about the mental picture some of the occupants had of Maud Wainwright. It was so unlike the truth. But also my mind was on the dinner and dance to come, and I was mentally checking my lists.

I remember that there was a dance at the Beverly Club that night, and as I passed it I saw Audrey Morgan come out on the porch and stand there, looking like a peri at the gate of heaven.

She was not alone for long, of course. It is the fate of the Audreys of this world always to have some male hovering about. This time it was Larry Hamilton, and I hastily ran over the list again in my mind. Yes, Larry was on it, so I went back to my room and slept wretchedly, my brain seething with a hundred gilt chairs with brocaded seats to come from town, a blue taffeta dress with a full sweeping skirt and not too low in the neck, a manicure and shampoo when and if possible, place cards, flowers, candles, and a stag line for the dance.