But a moment later she was her old self again. I was putting on a little white dress when Lolly swung me round and examined me.
"Here, you can't go to R——'s in duds like these," she said. "Wait a minute."
She disappeared into her own room, and came back with her arms full of dresses; Lolly had beautiful clothes. I suppose her tailored suits would have looked ludicrous, as she was larger than I, but a little cream-colored chiffon frock, trimmed with pearl beads, was very becoming to me. She also lent me an evening cap, and a red rose (artificial) for my waist.
"Now look at yourself," said she, "and after this don't let me catch you mooning in your room at night. Get out and show yourself. You'll only be young once."
Lolly was in blue, the color of her eyes, and she looked, as always, "stunning." Beside her, I'm afraid, I appeared very insignificant, for Lolly was a real beauty. I never went anywhere with her but people—men and women, too—would stare at her, and turn around for a second look. People stared at me, too, but in a different sort of way, as if I interested them or they were puzzled to know my nationality. I would have given anything to look less foreign. My darkness marked and crushed me, I who loved blondness like the sun.
Mr. Chambers did everything very splendidly. He had a carriage to take us to dinner, and he was extremely gallant in his manner to both Lolly and me, just as attentive, I thought wistfully, as if we were society girls, and not poor girls of the Y. W. C. A. Lolly and he talked a good deal in an undertone, and although they did not ignore me, I was left out of most of their conversation. I did not mind this. I was happy to lean back in that carriage, and indulge in my own fine dreams.
I should have enjoyed the dinner more if our host had been some one other than this man Chambers. He made me uncomfortable and secretly angry by looking at me in a meaning sort of way when Lolly did not see him. I felt as if he were trying to establish some sort of intimacy with me behind Lolly's back. He sat beside Lolly, and I opposite them, and he would lean back in his seat, inclined toward Lolly, and over her shoulder he would make his bold eyes at me. No, I did not like that man, and I avoided his glances as much as I could. But Lolly, my poor Lolly, seemed infatuated with him, and all her pretty banter and chaff had departed. She scarcely ate anything, but played nervously with her food, and she would look at him in such a way that I wanted both to shake her and to cry for her.
But this is my story, not Lolly's, though hers perhaps would make a better tale than mine.
Chambers said he could tell one's fortune from one's palm, and that he would like to see mine. Lolly said:
"Nora carries her fortune in her head."