CHAPTER III
The party was a Bingo. Before midnight that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone. The music, good at the outset, soon become irresistible. (A drink all around every seven numbers was the Fentriss prescription for the musicians; expensive but worth it.) The punch was very special. Several of its masculine devotees had already faded, and one girl had been quietly spirited to an upper room, there to be disrobed and de-spirited. There was much drifting in and out of the French windows to the darkness of the lawn, and plaintive inquiries for missing partners were prevalent. Lovely, flushed, youthful, regnant in her own special queendom, Mona Fentriss sat in the midst of a circle of the older men, bandying stories with them in voices which were discreetly lowered when any of the youngsters drew near. It was the top of the time.
Upstairs in her remote bed Patricia sat with her pillows banked behind her, her knees propping her chin, her angry eyes staring into the dark. The strong rhythms of the music, barbaric, excitant, harshly sensuous, throbbed upward, stirring her to dim and uninterpretable hungers.
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" she whispered in shivering wrath.
She had been banished from even the earliest part of the festivities. It was mean. It was rotten. It was stinkin' rotten. Why should she be treated so? She wasn't a baby. She wouldn't stand it!
Leaping from bed she ran to her tumbled clothes, began feverishly to put them on. In undergarments and stockings she crept across to Dee's room, listened and entered. This was gross violation of the law of the household. But Pat was desperate. Selecting a pink dinner dress rather high-cut for Dee, she held it against her half-developed body, decided that it would do, ran back with her booty to her own den. Putting it on before the glass she became unpleasantly conscious of several pimples on her face. She was always having pimples! The others never had them. She wondered why, resentfully. Should she pick the one at the side of her nose? Or would that only make it the more unsightly? She decided for the heroic method, performed a clumsy operation with a pin, and perceived at once that she must have some powder. This time it was Connie's room that she invaded, and while she was about it she found and added a touch of colour. It was by no means the height of artistry, but Pat approved it as eminently satisfactory. She did not wholly approve Dee's dress. There was too much of it in important spots. She meditated padding, but did not know how it was done. Or—dared she go back and get a scantier frock? Contemplating her boyish contours she realised that it would not do.
"Flat like a board," she muttered disparagingly. "I'm bunched all in the wrong places."