Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she laughed a great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out of her at the slightest excuse like a small fountain. She was a very pretty girl with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held back from her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform; and she had big black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out into far more rounded and mature lines than Flip's. "Remember when old Black and Midnight caught me using cold cream last winter?" she asked Erna. "She'll let you use all kinds of guk like mentholatum on your face to keep from getting chapped, but not cold cream because it's make-up."
Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own sand-colored hair, and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and her body as long and skinny as a string bean.—That's just it, she thought.—I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks like somebody who's going to be a movie star and Erna looks like somebody who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.
She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would grow up to be a beauty; but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted it.
The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate, came in. She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna had somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria's parents were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school with four brand new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of everything, even toothbrushes. "Esmée Bodet says Gloria's nouveau riche," Erna added. "Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in Canada or someplace sent her the clothes because she didn't have the coupons."
"Esmée always finds out everything about everybody," Jackie had said. "I don't know how she does it. She's an awful snoop."
Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started combing out her tangles.
"Use a brush," Erna suggested.
"Oh, I never use a brush, ducky," Gloria said. "It's bad for a permanent."
Jackie laughed. "That's silly."
"Your hair's natural, isn't it?" Gloria asked.