Jeannette found her mother sitting up for her when she returned a little after twelve. Mrs. Sturgis was engaged in writing out bills for her lessons which she would mail on the last day of the month. The old canvas-covered ledger with its criss-crossed pages, its erasures and torn edges in which she kept her accounts was a familiar sight in her hands. She was forever turning its thumbed and ink-stained leaves, studying old and new entries, making half-finished calculations in the margins or blank spaces. She sat now in the unbecoming flannelette gown she wore at night, her thin hair in two skimpy pig-tails on either side of her neck, a tattered knitted shawl of a murderous red about her shoulders, and a comforter across her knees. In the yellow light of the hissing gas above her head, she appeared haggard and old, with dark pockets underneath her scant eyebrows and even gaunt hollows in the little cheeks that bulged plumply and bravely during the day above her tight lace collars.
“Well,—dear-ie!” Bright animation struggled into the mother’s face, and her voice at once was all eagerness and interest. “Did you have a good time? ... Tell me about it.”
Immediately she detected something was amiss. There was none of the gay exhilaration and youthful exuberance in her daughter’s manner, she had confidently expected. One searching glance into the glittering dark eyes, as the girl stooped to kiss her, told her Jeannette was fighting tears, struggling to control a burst of pent-up feeling.
“Why, dearie! What’s the matter? ... Tell me.”
“Oh——!” There was young fury in the exclamation. Jeannette flung herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands, plunging her finger-tips deep into her thick coils of black hair. For several minutes she would not answer her mother’s anxious inquiries.
“Wasn’t Mr. Najarian nice to you? Didn’t he look after you? Didn’t you have a good time? Tell Mama,” Mrs. Sturgis persisted.
“Oh, yes,—he was very nice, ... yes, he took good care of me,—and Rosa did, too.”
“Then what is it, dearie? What happened? Mama wants to know.”
Jeannette drew a long breath and got brusquely to her feet.
“Oh, it’s this!” she burst out, striking the gown she wore with contemptuous fingers. “It’s these miserable things I have to wear! There wasn’t a girl there, to-night,—not even one,—that wasn’t better dressed. I was a laughing-stock among them! ... Oh, I know I was, I know I was! ... They all felt sorry for me: a poor little neighbor of Dikron Najarian’s on whom he had taken pity and whom he had asked to a dance! ... Oh! I can’t and won’t stand it, Mama.”