As she watched them depart, Joy almost forgot how tired she was. Half-past four in the morning—and they were going riding. She limped over to the bureau and looked down at Sarah’s tools. She had never seen girls like these. They did not seem to care what they did. And the way they talked—you could not pick out any one thing, but it did not sound nice, somehow.
But Jerry was fascinating—and one was never bored. Perhaps that was why they were all right. She turned off the light and felt her way back to her cot over a succession of wardrobe trunks and hat boxes.
Once in bed, sleep was impossible with the whirl of new events playing in kaleidoscopic glitter across a mind that was not used to so much colour and certainly not much glitter. Her first Prom. How thrilled she had been when Tom had asked her. Of course, there was no thrill to Tom, as she had known him all her life. But since she lived in a typical New England town where the always increasing numbers of boys were weary of trying to balance themselves against the always increasing numbers of girls, it was somewhat of an honour for him to single her out from all the rest. She had never been outside of Foxhollow Corners before. This was not as strange as it would have been had she come from any part of the country but New England. She had simply never made the occasion; nor had the occasion been made for her to go. Most providentially, there had been a very good boarding school in Foxhollow Corners, at which she had been a day pupil. And during the war there had been too much Red-Crossing to do, too much to keep her nose to the grindstone at Foxhollow Corners, to think of the travel that the enterprise of service might have meant to her. And this was her first Prom, and all the girls at home were green, simply green. Tom had taken some of them in times past and probably would continue to vary his program thus. “Don’t encourage the girls too much,” was his motto.
The first day of Prom had passed in a shimmer. The girls were, for the most part, strange, exotic creatures—something of Sarah’s vintage—but the men were of varied types. It was odd, Joy reflected, that such different boys should all, or nearly all, ask the same type of girl. There was one man—one particular man—Joy was at the age where there always had to be one particular man in her dreams—and this man seemed to have stepped right out of them made to order. In the first place, he was the best looking man she had ever seen—tall and very dark, with eyes that, when he smiled, grew tender. Tom had said that he was “a big man in college,” a star at football, and a “regular all-around prince.” His name was Jack Barnett, and although he had no girl at Prom, all the girls seemed to know him. He had cut in on Joy several times, and she still tingled from the thrill of it. Every girl knows the taking-stock preliminary to sleep after a dance. “Did he mean that? Or was he only handing a line. Did I show too much that I liked him? And is it his move now, or mine?” Joy lost herself in a dream that the football hero had cut in on her again and wouldn’t let anyone else dance with her.
She was awakened by a queer thumping noise. Pushing open her eyes, through a just-alive-to-the-world haze she saw Jerry doing handsprings about the room. Determined not to appear surprised at anything more, she sat up in bed and surveyed her with a thin glaze of calmness.
“Ow!” said Jerry conversationally, as she knocked up against a trunk and came to a full stop. Then, sitting up and rubbing her elbows: “Oh, hello; you awake? Hope I didn’t disturb you, or anything. I’m waking myself up; I’ve found this is the best way to keep me going, when I haven’t had any sleep.”
“Do you mean to say that you haven’t had any sleep at all?”
“Right the first time! We just got back—had a blow-out, of course, and now it’s too late to take in any classes!” Jerry began to change her raiment. “Look at that——” and she pointed to the bed. Sarah lay on it, evening coat and all, just as she had fallen.
“Why,” said Joy, “she almost looks as if she had fallen asleep before she landed there.”
Jerry executed a pas seul, stepping through a hatbox with careless ease. “You hit your head on the nail that time! She always passes out that way—got no more starch in her throat—she’ll have to come out of it, too, because our little playmates who are blowing us to this Prom will be here soon, and they’ll get noisy if we don’t put in a swift appearance.” She came up to the still figure on the bed, and shook it. Joy admired the vivid red of her cheeks. There was no artificiality about Jerry. Her face was fairly blazing; and what was more remarkable after a sleepless night, her eyes were very bright. On second inspection, they were even shiny. After a prolonged shaking, Sarah fell limp from her hands.