Lilian was the sort of girl any one could understand. When she felt badly she would cry, when she didn’t she’d laugh. If she liked any one, she showed it, and if she disliked any one she nearly made faces at them, her distaste was so apparent.
Gloria Hazeltine was a new specimen to Lilian’s mother. She discovered with her woman’s intuition that something was troubling the young girl. She wanted so much to help her. But she could do nothing before such icy reserve.
“What—happens to me now?” she turned to Peggy and said, as they went to the outer door of the restaurant. “I suppose we go back to the college?”
“No,” said Peggy, peering anxiously down the street outside. “No, your sightseeing goes on from here. But I don’t see—what ought to be here.”
“Have you ordered a machine, Peggy?” asked Lilian in awe and happy expectation.
Peggy’s laugh rang out. “Well, not exactly ordered it,” she explained, “but hinted for it. It’s Jim’s, and he promised to bring it over from Amherst and meet us here at 2 o’clock. He’s five minutes late. That’s—oh, there he is. Come on, Mrs. Moore, come on, Lilian and Katherine and Myra Whitewell and Doris Winterbean. Hazel, I’m sorry you have classes.”
Unselfishly she handed Mrs. Moore into the front seat beside Jim, sure that it would add to the interest of everything for her, to have this good-looking young man explain things and deferentially point out new attractions.
“Only an hour and a half, Jim. I want to get Mrs. Moore back to go to Thirteen with me, and Lilian has biology at that time. You don’t think that’s so good a show class as Thirteen, do you, Lilian?”
“Mercy, no,” hastily answered Lilian. “Not so good a show class as any other. You don’t want to see grasshoppers cut up, do you, Mother?”
Mrs. Moore protested that she had no interest in grasshoppers under any circumstances, so the plan to hear Thirteen stood.