The words must have gone to Hattie’s knees, because, dropping a spat of mulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchen chair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal set on the shelf above it.

“Marcy!”

“And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I’m to be her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invited except Edwina Nelson, because her father’s on nearly all the same boards of directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and—­”

“Marcia!  Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing had happened!  Child, sometimes I think you’re made of ice.”

“Why, I’m glad, momie.”

But that’s what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfaction in Marcia’s eyes.

“Glad,” said Hattie, the word full of tears.  “Why, honey, you don’t realize it, but this is the beginning!  This is the meaning of my struggle to get you into Miss Harperly’s school.  It wasn’t easy.  I’ve never told you the—­strings I had to pull.  Conservative people, you see.  That’s what the Grosbecks are, too.  Home people.  The kind who can afford to wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirty years.”

“Nome’s mother was born in the house they live in.”

“Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges.  Taxpayers.  Policyholders.  Church members.  Oh, Marcia, those are the safe people!”

“There’s a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church.”

“I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy.  Afraid you would take to the make-believe folks.  The play people.  The theater.  I used to fear for you!  The Pullman car.  The furnished room.  That going to the hotel room, alone, nights after the show.  You laugh at me sometimes for just throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face.  It’s because I’m too tired, Marcy.  Too lonesome for home.  On the road I always used to think of all the families in the audience.  The husbands and wives.  Brides and grooms.  Sweethearts.  After the performance they all went to homes.  To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks’.  To cottages.  To flats.  With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-room table.  Lamps burning and waiting.  Nighties laid out and bedcovers turned back.  And then—­me.  Second-rate hotels.  That walk through the dark downtown streets.  Passing men who address you through closed lips.  The dingy lobby.  There’s no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reach over that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell of disinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you.”

“Ugh!”

“Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia!  The unexciting people, maybe, but the safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones.”

“Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy.”

“Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia.”