AN HONEST WOMAN
41
mystery stories: check them m a railroad parcel room and throw
away the check.
All
this
meant that no bachelor in his right mind would send
a girl to the doctor to be fitted, if he did not feel pretty serious about
her. The problem, of course, only arose with respectable married
women or nice girls like Dottie and Kay, who lived with their par–
ents or with other girls. There were women of the looser sort, divor–
cees and unattached secretaries and office-workers living in their own
apartments, who equipped themselves independently and kept their
douche-bags hanging on the back of their bathroom door for anybody
to see who wandered in to pee during a cocktail party. One friend
of John's, a veteran assistant stage-manager, always made it a point
to look over a girl's bathroom before starting anything; if the bag
was on the door, it was nine to one he would make her on the first try.
Once a girl got a pessary, it cheapened her in a way.
It
was
different, Kay thought, for a married woman. She and John loathed
children .and intended to leave breeding to others: Kay had seen in
her own family how offspring could take the joy out of marriage.
Her tribe of brothers and sisters had kept her Dads' nose to the
grindstone; if he had not had so many children, he might have been
a famous surgeon, instead of a hard-worked G.P., with only a wing
in the hospital to commemorate the work he had done in orthopedics
and on serums for meningitis. Poor Dads had quite a kick out of
sending her East to Vassar, and she had the feeling that he wanted
her to have the life he might have had himself, in the big world of
people that counted. He had just crashed through nobly with a
check, for the amount he and Mother would have spent on trains
and hotels, if they had come on for the wedding; and it moved her
and John almost to tears to think of his showing his faith in them
in such a generous way. And she and John did not intend to betray
him by getting caught, .as he had, and having children, when John
could make a name for himself in the theater. The theater-strange
coincidence !-was one of Dads' big passions; he and Mother went
to see all the touring companies and had tickets every night when
they came to New York.
Still, passionate as she was on the subject of birth control, it
gave Kay an uneasy feeling to see Dottie embarking so strong-mindedly
on a career of crime. Just to show that Dottie had somebody behind
