She told him she was studying music in Boston, and living with Jerry. This he received in a silence which became so long that she did not know what thread he was taking up when he finally demanded:
“Did you mean that?”
“Mean what?”
“That you were living with Jerry. Were you serious?” Receiving an affirmative answer, he fell back again into a silence which lasted until Grant cut back at the end of the dance.
They rode home with Betty and her “man,” thus escaping Mrs. Grey, and Joy and Betty went upstairs before Mr. and Mrs. Grey returned. Betty was full of thrills. She confided to Joy that she “had found someone harmonious, even to dancing, at last.” He was her escort of the evening, and they were engaged.
“Engaged!” Joy exclaimed. “You, at your age—you don’t want to be married at sixteen, do you?”
“Of course not!” Betty tossed her head. “My goodness, Joy, I’ve been engaged three times already—being engaged and getting married have got nothing to do with each other!”
Saying which, she departed, leaving Joy undecided whether to laugh or be horrified. Decidedly, there was more to these naïve, sunburned kittens than met the eye of the innocent bystander.
Sunday breakfast at the Greys’ was a late affair, and the table was not fully assembled until eleven. Joy dreaded meeting Mrs. Grey’s scrutiny again; she even shrank from seeing Grant, for in the morning sun she blushed at the memory of things under the white heat of the moon, and longed for another moon with no glaring day intervening; but finally she could not longer postpone it. Mrs. Grey was presiding at the table, immaculate and unruffled as ever, not a hair of her marcel straying from its designated path. She enquired meticulously if Joy had slept well, then talked past Joy on one side and Grant and Betty on the other, to Mr. Grey at the head. Joy and Grant met each other’s eyes for one glowing moment, then devoted their attention to their plates. After all, it was the first real meal they had had since yesterday morning. Conversation flitted its way about as noncommittally as a feather-duster, ignoring the vital corners. It was Mr. Grey who grew expansive after his soft-boiled eggs and toast.
“In my day,” he remarked with a chuckle, “we didn’t choose a club-house dance in which to pick a fight. We chose some vacant lot.”