"I would not have the restless soul
That sees not beauty everywhere.
I see it glint on ocean waves,
Dance through a youth's or maiden's hair."
"Mamma, they're pushing so! Good night, Mr. Lindsley. Mamma, come!"
Outside in the wet dusk they boarded an electric car, Lilly and her mother crammed on a rear platform of the wet overcoats, leaking umbrellas, and wet-smelling mackintoshes of dinner-bound St. Louis.
"He's a right nice young man, intelligent—but if ever a person looked like a horse! You see, he agrees with your papa and me. You don't apply yourself to any one thing."
Lilly turned her inflamed, quivering face upon her mother, trying to speak through a violent aching of tonsils.
"Oh," she cried, "how could you? I'll never look him in the face again!
Oh—oh—how could you?"
"Are you crazy? How could I what?"
"The poem. The—the glint in—his hair. He'll think it was his hair I meant. Oh! Oh!"
The ready ire which could flame up in Mrs. Becker leaped out then.
"If you are ashamed of your mother, maybe you had better not be seen out with her again. All I am good for is to stint and manage to get you pretty clothes."