THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD
by: Edna Ferber (1885-1968)
Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman—so bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.
Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did not look like a bad woman. We do not associate vice with eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed prosperous, comfortable wife and mother, who was in danger of losing her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive was the Very Young Husband, who lived next door to the corner cottage that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very Young Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. The whole neighbourhood borrowed her and tried to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil.
Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar fooling with the furnace. Three protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband, following Mrs. Mooney's directions, cautiously descended the cellar stairs, Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze of pipe-smoke.
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