Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.

As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.

Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'.

But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it's stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.