Book 1 — CHAPTER I (continued 2)
Reading edition
It was her habit to let herself in with the latchkey just as if she were the man of the house.
"Mercy, Ellen, you're late! I was getting feared!" cried her mother, who had gone to the kitchen to boil up the cocoa when she heard the key in the lock. She liked that sound. Ellen thought herself a wonderful new sort of woman who was going to be just like a man; she would have been surprised if she had known how many of her stern-browed ambitions, how much of her virile swagger of life, were not the invention of her own soul, but had been suggested to her by an old woman who liked to pretend her daughter was a son.
"We had a great press of business and I had to stay," said Ellen with masculine nonchalance. "A most interesting client came in...."