Why, I remember way back yonder in the 'seventies how I was always tryin' to persuade a woman with a skinny figure not to wear a cuirass basque and a woman with a stout figure not to put on a draped polonaise.

I got to know better presently, and you will, too, before you've been at it much longer.

They all think they can look like fashion plates--the skinniest and the stoutest alike--and there ain't a bit of use tryin' to undeceive 'em.
The last thing a woman ever sees straight is her figure." "I can't help feeling," demurred Gabriella, forsaking the moral issue for the argument of mere expediency, "that honesty is good business." "Well, it ain't," retorted Miss Polly sharply.

"It may be good religion and good behaviour, but there's one thing it certainly ain't, and that is good business.

How many of these rich men we read about in the papers do you reckon spend their time settin' around and bein' honest?
Mind you I ain't sayin' I'd lie or steal myself, Gabriella, but I'm poor, and what I'm sayin' is that when you feel that way about it, you're as likely to stay poor as not." But the next day, life, with one of those startling surprises which defy philosophy and make drama, confirmed the most illogical of Gabriella's assumptions.