Her bag of three new one-hundred-dollar bills still hung in all its
reassuring entirety from the little pink ribbon about her neck, but the
confronting dentist's bill of twenty-five dollars, and the slow but acid
process of daily expenditure eating into the thirty or forty dollars
left in her purse, lay uncomfortably against her consciousness.
By a series of constantly repeated calculations, particularly if the
short story should bring in even a check large enough to cover the
dentistry, Lilly planned to span the weeks of her narrowing interval
with the three bills intact, but pretty shortly the first piece of mail
she had received in New York arrived in a long, bulky envelope:
MY DEAR MISS PARLOW,--Thank you for submitting the accompanying
manuscript. It does not quite get across in this office, but it is near
enough to our standard for us to want to see anything more you may care
to submit.--THE EDITOR.
That night Lilly cried again all through her sleep, presenting herself
next morning at the dentist's with heavy, rimmed eyes. It was her final
visit, and before mounting the chair she laid down her carefully
counted-out payment, five five-dollar bills, in a little pile on the
revolving stand.
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