“Imagine mine!” Gloria chuckled, recalling Jane’s effort with scrim and a pretty figured flowered lawn. The lawn would always fade and have to come down before winter was half over, and the scrim did get so straggly. But when it was fresh in early fall, and when Millie came in to help drape—Millie was much more domestic than Gloria—during that period of enthusiasm the blue room in the cottage at Barbend was indeed all that any girl might wish to be the possessor of.
She placed her “tools,” as Trixy called brush, comb and complexion implements, out on Hazel’s dresser in that sort of fashion she had noticed on the afternoon she went with Trixy Travers while she dressed for tennis. She hung up her dresses upon the satin covered hangers just slightly perfumed, and she put her sweaters in the window-seat box, so that they would not stretch—although she didn’t care a pin about such trifles, she felt obliged to respect the conveniences of Hazel’s room.
Her aunt was in and out so often that nothing but the fact of her positive need in the kitchen or the consequences of a spoiled dinner, saved Gloria from such supervision as she would have resented.
“Now, do be careful, Gloria,” the aunt would caution. “You have no idea how fussy Hazel is, and this room cost—well, it cost—” A wave of the shiny hands and a catch of the snatchy breath finished what words failed to express.
“Yes, it must have cost an awful lot,” agreed Gloria. “I wonder Hazel wouldn’t have rather bought a launch.”
“A launch! Hazel!”
“Why, yes. Doesn’t she like to run a launch? I just live for the day when I shall be a captain of my own,” said Gloria, jabbing her best silk scarf on a hook and making a hole in the Roman stripe.
“Dear me! I smell the beans,” exclaimed the nervous aunt. “But please, Glory, don’t upset anything. You have no idea—Land sakes! My beans are done for!”
Gloria stood before the mirror and gazed into her own eyes. There was a sparkle of fun lurking in their depths, and the girl, so lately stifled in her spontaneous merriment was silently agreeing with the reflected temptation to have “some fun.” Why not? What girl could live and be a girl and just mope?
“After dinner,” she promised, “we’ll see what sort of fun we can dig up out here. I shall die if I don’t have a good laugh soon.”