“She’s a nice child,” he said. “She’s only living up to a type. And there isn’t an ounce of hypocrisy in her. I can see through her, all right.”
“I dare say,” Tish retorted grimly. “So can anyone else, when the sun is shining.”
But the climax really came when old Mr. Barnes, on the floor above Tish’s apartment, sent her a note. It seems that he had asthma and sat at the window just above Lily May’s, and the note he sent was to ask Tish not to smoke cigarettes out her window. I really thought Tish would have a stroke on the head of it, and if Annabelle Carter hadn’t been in Europe I am quite sure she would have sent Lily May back home.
But there we were, with Lily May on our hands for three months, and Hannah already rolling her stockings below her knees and with one eyebrow almost gone, where she had tried to shave it to a line with a razor. And then one day Aggie began to talk about long hair being a worry, and that it would be easier to put on her tonic if it was short; and with that Tish took the island Charlie Sands had found, and we started.
II
I shall never forget Lily May’s expression when she saw Tish trying on the knickerbockers which are her usual wear when in the open.
“Oh, I wouldn’t!” she said in a sort of wail.
“Why not?” Tish demanded tartly. “At least they cover me, which is more than I can say of some of your clothes.”
“But they’re not—not feminine,” said Lily May, and Tish stared at her.
“Feminine!” she said. “The outdoors is not a matter of sex. Thank God, the sea is sexless; so are the rocks and trees.”