“Didn’t we have fun yesterday, Aunt Jan? Oh, I just love going shopping with you! You know everything!”
Jeannette smiled complacently. She was a dear child, this! So responsive and appreciative!
Suddenly she glanced at her sharply, whipped a handkerchief from the bureau, and before unsuspecting Etta could guess what she was about, gave the girl’s lip a quick rub. There was a tell-tale smudge of red on the white linen. Jeannette held forth the evidence accusingly and her niece began to laugh, hanging her head like a little girl half her years.
“I tell you, Etta, it doesn’t become you! Your lips are red enough without putting any of that Jap paste on them! When you rouge them, it makes you look cheap and common.... I don’t care what the other girls do!”
She surveyed the girl critically: a handsome child with a lovely mop of dark brown hair that clung in rich clusters of natural curls about her neck and ears; her eyes were unusually large and of a deep, velvety duskiness, though there was a perpetual merry light in them, and her mouth, too, had a ready smile; her teeth were glistening white, but her complexion was bad, given to eruptions and blotches.
“And I wish,” continued Jeannette, “you’d stop eating candy and ice-cream sodas, and leave cake and pastry alone. Your skin would clear out in no time. It’s a shame a girl as pretty as you has to spoil her looks by injudicious eating.”
“Isn’t it the limit?” agreed Etta. Her face clouded and she went close to the mirror to study her reflection narrowly.
“I never knew it to fail!” she said in disgust. “Wednesday night, Marjorie Bowen’s giving a bridge party, and she’s invited a boy I’m just dying to meet! And there’s a blossom coming right here on my chin! I always break out if there’s anything special doing!”
“Well, I tell you!” exclaimed her aunt. “You wouldn’t have those things if you’d diet with a little care. Massaging won’t help a bit; you’ve got to remember to stop eating sweets.... Who’s the new beau you’re ‘dying to meet’?”
“Oh, he’s a high-roller,—lives down on the Point,—drives a Stutz and everything! The girls are all mad about him. He’s been at Manlius for the last two or three years, and now he’s freshman at Yale.... Name’s Herbert Gibbs!”