It was a difficult situation, for of course Tish could not insist on going, after that. And Aggie suffered also, for on the hay-fever season coming on she brought out her medicinal cigarettes, and Lily May walked right out and bought her a vaporizing lamp instead, which smelled simply horrible when lighted.
But it was over Hannah that Tish suffered the most, for of course Lily May had had her hair bobbed, and Hannah rebelled the first minute she saw it.
“Either she wears a hat or I don’t, Miss Tish,” she said. “And you’d better put a hat on her. The way that janitor is hanging around this place is simply sinful.”
It ended by Hannah abandoning her hat, copying Lily May’s method of fixing her hair; only where Lily May’s hair hung straight and dark, Hannah was obliged to use soap to gain the same effect.
As Tish observed to her scathingly, “It will break off some night in your sleep. And then where will you be?”
It became evident before long that the city simply would not do for Lily May. The grocer’s boy took to forgetting things so he could make a second trip, and in the market one day Mr. Jurgens, Tish’s butcher, handed Lily May a bunch of pansies.
“Pansies are for thoughts, Miss Lily May,” he said.
And Tish said he looked so like a sick calf that she absently ordered veal for dinner, although she had meant to have lamb chops.
Other things, too, began to worry us. One was that although Lily May had, according to orders, received no letters from the Field youth, Hannah’s mail had suddenly increased. For years she had received scarcely anything but the catalogue of a mail-order house, and now there was seldom a mail went by without her getting something.
Another was Tish’s discovery that Lily May wore hardly any clothes. I shall never forget the day Tish discovered how little she actually wore. It was wash day, and Tish had engaged Mrs. Schwartz for an extra day.