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It was a good deal of a strain for Flora, used to the sociability of a cafe kitchen, to reconcile herself to the solitude of her own, and her hospitality never could resist letting persistent agents in for an exposition of their wares. She had consorted pleasantly with Chuck and with her other acquaintances, both girls and boys, without much recourse either to her vocabulary or to her arithmetic. She had always spent her money until she was broke, and then got herself fed by her escort of the period until the next payday. Her conversation was about as follows: If Chuck remarked, "There goes a white horse," she shouted with laughter, and said "Hot dog!" If he said, "That's a Ford," she agreed, murmuring, "You said it," and snuggled closer. She could also say "Ain't it so?", "You're a fright," "I'll say," "Hell's bells," and "You're crazy with the heat." She could, moreover, giggle and say nothing, which worked quite as well. She was healthy and good-natured, she liked company, and was normal in all but mind.

To come back to the agents who were so voluble, and whose living depended upon selling goods, could anyone expect Flora to be a match for them? "Start a home library with 'Flames of Fervor,'" said one. "Greatest deeds done, and who done "cm -- for less than a cent a page." Flora was dazzled -- less than a cent a page for so much print! She made a $5 installment payment, and had nothing left to pay on the grocer's weekly bill, for she had paid a like amount toward a fur coat, the same on the rent, and Chuck had retained $5 for his own use. Four times five makes twenty -- surely not difficult for a normal mind. But a moron cannot grasp its significance rapidly enough to come to a decision before the agent has disappeared around the block.

You recall, no doubt, the standard example in arithmetic which every fourteen-year-old school-child is supposed to be able to solve: If two pencils cost five cents, how many can you get for fifty cents? Not only pencils, but doughnuts, dill-pickles, apples, and cotton handkerchiefs are bought at about this price. But neither Flora nor any of her moron friends could master the problem. We knew they could not because we had asked them. Flora's answer was twenty-five because two into fifty is twenty-five. Her friend Lucille's, on the other hand, was a hundred, because two times fifty is a hundred. (Lucille's husband is in the penitentiary for stealing motor-cars -- he had to steal something to keep ahead of her shopping.) Another friend, Annie, ventured a still more generous estimate. She said: "Five times fifty, because five cents times fifty cents is five rimes fifty, -- whatever that is." Chuck himself answered ten, because "You get two for five, and two rimes five is ten." It will be observed that all of them knew that something must be done in the way of arithmetic, and that their arithmetic was generally correct -- except for the fact that they could not select the right process to employ. A simple problem was to them as Relativity is to the rest of us. If our household accounts depended upon a real understanding of Relativity, we should be precisely in Flora's case, for her capacity to live within her income depends upon simple arithmetical analysis. If she and her friends had been low-grade feeble-minded, they could not have multiplied even their twos and fives. But they were only morons.

It was certainly essential that Flora, out of Chuck's weekly twenty dollars, should save a little for the future, so another example suitable for a fourteen-year-old was set for her. "If you have twenty dollars a week, and spend fourteen a week, how long will it take you to save three hundred dollars?" Flora, who had a sense of humor, could not at first get past the joke that she should ever save anything. "A lifetime," she answered, -- "and a long lifetime." Then, "three hundred times fourteen." "Three hundred times fourteen what?" we persisted, and Flora answered "dollars." The example was written out for her, but she had completely lost the connection, and when she was again reminded, "But how long a time would it take to save it?", she answered, as if through the telephone, "2025." What she meant by that we shall never know. We know only that the firms equipped to solicit business with the mentally unsound will find Flora out and use the courts to collect their bills, and that with such arithmetical equipment her savings account will never be large.

Flora's good nature had often led her into difficulties, not only with agents in the way of rash purchases, but with friends in the way of picking up joy-rides, calling out of the windows to people she did not know, wearing ultra-conspicuous dress when she and Lucille (whom she soon took as a boarder) went shopping, and over-indulgence in matinees which neither could afford, and in which her flirtations with the trombonist made Chuck very jealous. Lucille, as a temporary widow, felt that she had a right to flirt with whom she chose, and Flora, from long habit, followed her example. In what words shall one urge the laws of morals and good taste upon a moron of flaming cheeks and healthy appetites, whose inclinations are those of an adult body with a child's mind? Unfortunately there is no value in exhortations unless one's auditor understands the words in which they are phrased, and what do Flora or Lucille (or Chuck for that matter) understand? All of them stuck in the fifth or sixth grade in school until they were so large that they were ashamed to be seen with the smaller children, and were tired of being scolded for not getting their lessons.