CHAPTER IX
SUSPICIONS
The dinner party was spoiled for Barbara. All she could think of was Nicky slamming his door in the face of those thoughtless girls who wanted to go slumming. As if the habits and homes of the poor should furnish them with amusement!
And she could imagine little Vicky jerking down the shades, the shades with the funny pictures on. But she could not quite imagine what might be the real cause of their alarm. All this seemed more than mere suspicion of those in the more agreeable walks of life.
Cara’s family had given her the exclusive use of the big dining-room for her party, and not even Dudley was present at dinner. The girls would, no doubt, have been delighted to have had a few boys present, but Cara had other ideas. She would give the first meal to the girls as they do it at college, except, of course, that the college menu could in no way compare to the Billows.
Two waitresses glided about attending to, and even anticipating, the girls’ slightest wish, and Barbara was glad to feel at home amid their ministrations.
“Not a question of clothes now,” she prompted herself, noticing more than one of the girls were showing some nervousness.
Cara easily led the conversation, but Louise and Esther would revert to the slumming party. That seemed to them to be the real event of the day.
“Babs, you should have been along,” said Louise, a little pointedly. “I know you just love that little Italian.”
“But Nicky was really hurt this afternoon,” Babs contended. “I can’t see how you forgot that. They are human, just as we are, and his folks probably were just as alarmed about his cut arm as ours might have been. Arms and cuts run about the same, I should think,” she said sharply.
“Oh, those people don’t mind cuts,” flung back Esther Deane disdainfully, and in total disregard of the impropriety of talking of “cuts” at a dinner table. “They just flourish knives the way some people point their fingers.”