But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at a tea dance sombody had at the Country Club he took me to one side and gave me a good talking to.
“You’re being rather a bad child, aren’t you?” he said.
“Certainly not.”
“Well, not bad, but—er—naughty. Now see here, Bab, I’m fond of you, and you’re growing into a mightey pretty girl. But your whole Social Life is at stake. For heaven’s sake, at least until you’re married, cut out the cigarettes and booze.”
That cut me to the heart, but what could I say?
Well, July came, and we had rented a house at Little Hampton and everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing Silver or Linen.
Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.
Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most precious Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a paper pattern to me. The sowing woman always had her mouth full of Pins, and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illagitimate, so I could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. It caused a grate deal of excitement, with Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar to swallow to soften the pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.
Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila’s last year’s tennis clothes were being fixed over for me.
But how true what dear Shakspeare says: