Suddenly Jeannette wanted to go. She pinched her mother’s arm, and an impatient protest escaped her lips.
“Oh, please, Mrs. Sturgis....” pleaded the young man.
A rich contralto voice sounded from the hallway of the floor below. The door to the apartment had been left open and now they could see big handsome Rosa Najarian’s face through the banisters as she stood halfway up the stairs.
“Do let your daughter come, Mrs. Sturgis. They are all nice boys and girls. I will keep a sharp eye on her and bring her home to you safely.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Sturgis, “I just wanted to feel satisfied that everything was right and proper.”
There were some further words. Jeannette left her mother talking with Dikron and flew to the dining-room, to her sister.
“Quick, Alice dearie! Dikron Najarian’s asked me to a dance. I must fly! Help me get ready. He’s waiting.”
Instantly there was a scurry, a jerking open of bureau drawers, a general diving into crowded closets. The question immediately arose, what was Jeannette to wear? In a mad burst of extravagance, she had sent her dotted Swiss muslin to the laundry. There remained only her old “party” dress, which had been done over and over, lengthened and lengthened, until now the velvet was worn and shiny, the covering of some of the buttons was gone and showed the bright metal beneath, the ribbon about the waist was split in several places. Yet there was nothing else, and while the girl was hooking herself into it, Alice daubed the metal buttons with ink, and sewed folds of the ribbon over where it had begun to split. Jeannette borrowed stockings from her sister and wedged her feet into a pair of her mother’s pumps which were too small for her. Her black lusterless locks were happily becomingly arranged, and excitement brought a warm dull red to her olive-tinted cheeks. She was in gay spirits when Najarian called for her some fifteen minutes later, and went off with him chattering vivaciously.
Mrs. Sturgis stood for a moment in the open doorway of her apartment and listened to the descending feet upon the stairs, to the lessening sound of gay young voices. She assured herself she caught Rosa Najarian’s warmer accents as the older girl met her brother and Jeannette two flights below; she still bent her ear for the last sounds of the little party as it made its way down the final flight of stairs, paused for an interval in the lowest hallway, and banged the front door behind it with a dull reverberation and a shiver of glass. As the house grew still she waited a minute or two longer with compressed lips and a troubled frown, then shook her round little cheeks firmly, turned back into her own apartment, and without comment began to help Alice hang up Jeannette’s discarded clothing and set the disordered room to rights.