“Silly little piece!” thought Betty. “She’s trying to ape Stacia!” And at home that afternoon, she remarked to Doris, “Someone couldn’t see me in the hall this morning.” She gave Doris a meaning look as she said this, but her lips were pursed in an amused smile.
Doris flushed. The applied color had been washed from her face before her appearance at home. “I saw you taking me in,” she pertly said. “Don’t you tell mother, Betty. There isn’t anything wicked about ‘make-up.’”
“Is that what Stacia calls it?” asked Betty. “No, I don’t suppose there is anything wrong; Mother never said no. It’s Father and Dick that say they’ll ‘wash our faces’ if they ever see us with any on. All the same, Mother doesn’t like it.”
“If you didn’t have any more natural color than Stacia has, you’d use it too, Betty Lee!” cried Doris, still on the defensive, though Betty had made no threat whatever.
“I wonder,” said Betty. “Honestly, Doris, I always feel that I want people to like the real me, not any painted up face. But I’ll not speak of it to Mother. I know you want to have your week-end and so far as I know Stacia is a good enough girl.”
This speech seemed to annoy Doris still further.
“Oh, you think you’re so smart because you’re a junior! Mother has promised and I’d have my week-end anyhow. I’d just a little rather you wouldn’t tell Mother. I don’t know that I like lipstick myself. But it’s my own affair!”
“Yes,” said Betty, “and those things are between you and Mother, Doris. Still, you shouldn’t let Mother be in the dark about your friends. Have a good time and tell her all about it—is my advice.”
“I’m not asking for advice, thank you.”
This rebellion and withdrawing from confidence on the part of Doris was a surprise to Betty, who realized now that she might have seen it coming. Perhaps she had been too much absorbed in her own affairs, and with her own friends. She must see more of her at school, possibly. Since helping her start her freshman year, she had gone on “her own way rejoicing,” Betty acknowledged to herself. She had Carolyn and Kathryn and she wondered if she had shut Doris out too much. That must be changed, provided she could change it now. She wasn’t going to play the part of mentor. It was for her mother to rebuke, or manage, and it would be a delicate proposition to carry out her mother’s injunction to “keep an eye” on Doris.