Jennette Lee

“ And all that she wanted grew with every day of work. . . . Her eyes followed the amber needles, and thoughts seemed to flow before them as if a pattern knitted itself in the green wool. . . . At first she had tried to take notes while clients talked, but she found they grew self-conscious and began to embroider facts, or they ran dry and stopped altogether. But the knitting seemed to relax tongues, and she had fallen into a way, when she wanted to remember a point or reconsider it, of purling a double stitch in her work. ”

“ It would be a silly sort of body, if its heart went wrong, that went to work planning to get rid of it—divorce it for good and all. That's a homely way of saying it. I'm a homely woman, and when people are married they seem to me one, just as truly as the body is all one. I don't divorce part of me—unless it's too bad to be made right. If it is, I go to a good surgeon and tell him to make quick work of it." She paused with a thoughtful look, and smiled. "But the best surgeons now, they tell me, don't believe in amputating. They bring their cases to a serum specialist—don't they?" ”

“ Many of her plans were wrought in wool, and the knitting was always in her hands when she was talking with a new client or thinking out his case. But it was confined to the up-town office, where the most important business of the firm was transacted. Here, whenever possible, Milly received clients for the first time. Many of her clients did not even guess of the existence of the busier office with its rows of typewriters and swinging glass doors. ”