philosophy her aunt was unfolding.
“Then exercise a woman’s right—the privilege of changing her mind. But you won’t have to do that often—man likes to prove his self-assumed masculine superiority too much to realize how you’re handling him.”
“That sounds dangerously like opportunism—er—it might even be called deceit,” Mimi laughed.
“Yes, I suppose it can,” Mrs. Rogers frankly admitted. “But life’s like that—you can go tilting at windmills and getting knocked over for your pains or you can adapt yourself to the things you find around you. After all, the important thing is to work out for one’s own guidance the philosophy in keeping with one’s ideas and ideals and then extract from life all the happiness one can without destroying what’s more important than everything else—one’s inner self. When that’s gone, then you can have every material thing there is—and you’ll know misery such as even you have never experienced or ever will know. …”
The new life she was ushered into through Aunt Sophie seemed by comparison with her experiences since she left Atlanta almost idyllic to Mimi. Through her aunt’s influence, she secured work sewing, the only thing she could do by which she could earn money. But for this she had a certain gift. She loved the feel of silks and satins and chiffons; the finer the fabric, the more she liked to handle it and make it into alluring garments. All day she worked and in the evenings she either stayed at home and made dresses and other garments for herself to replace the worn things she had brought to New York, or with her aunt she walked through the streets of Harlem or rode on the bus down Fifth Avenue. Occasionally this schedule was varied by a visit to the theatre, which Mimi loved. A new world was opening to her and in it she found greater happiness than she had believed she would ever know again. These