“And Dodo being my only child, Miss Maynard, she is well worth knowing. She will inherit the million her father made,” added Mrs. Alexander.
Eleanor smiled cynically. “I’m sorry for you, Dodo. It spoils one’s life to be reminded of how much one has to live up to, when one is young and only wants to be carefree and happy.”
“Oh, do you feel that way, too! I thought it was only me who was queer. Ma says other girls would give their heads to be in my place,” exclaimed the girl, anxiously.
Eleanor now took a keener look at the speaker. It was evident from her words that she was not what she was dressed up to represent. “You have a chance to be yourself, in spite of every one, you know,” said Eleanor.
“Well, I wish to goodness you would show me how! I hate all this fluffy-ruffle stuff and I wish we could get back to that time when I could go with my hair twisted at the back of my neck; and a cold water wash to clean my face, instead of all this cold cream business, and then the paint and flour afterwards!” declared Dodo, bluntly.
“Oh deary! I beg of you—don’t display your ignorance before strangers like this!” wailed her mother, fluttering a lace handkerchief before her eyes. “Eleanor Maynard is one of the Maynards of Chicago.”
“Why not! If Eleanor Maynard is half the girl I think she is—from what I read, that time they were lost on the Flat Tops and from what she just said, then she’ll appreciate me the more for my honesty,” asserted the girl.
“I do, Dodo. I never had much use for make-up, but I know society condones the use of it all. So I’m glad to find a real girl who dislikes it as much as Polly and I do.”
“There now, Ma! And I bet these girls will look at your pet hobby much the same as I do.” Then Dodo turned to Eleanor and added: “Ma’s bound to palm me off on some little stick of a nobleman in Europe, just to brag about my name with a handle to it. But I say I don’t want a husband—especially a foreign one. If I have to marry, let me choose a westerner! The kind I’m used to.”
Eleanor could have hugged the girl for her frank honesty so different from what she had looked for from the daughter of the silly woman before her.