Gloria turned a face of twinkling astonishment upon her visitor. “Why, Amanda Darcy Cole! What would the generations of your Puritan forbears—”
“Don’t you call me Amanda, either! It’s an old-maid name. I hate it—even if it does fit.”
“It is rather a handicap,” admitted her hostess. “But Darcy’s pretty enough, anyway.”
“It’s the only pretty thing about me. Oh, Gloria,” burst out the girl in a sudden flood-tide of self-revelation, “if you knew how I long to be pretty! Not beautiful, like you; I wouldn’t ask as much as that. But just pretty enough to be noticed once in a while.”
“If you knew how I long to be pretty!”
“Why, Darcy, dear—”
“No: let me talk!” Darcy proceeded in little, jerky gasps of eagerness. “Pretty. And well-dressed. And up-to-date. And smart. And everything! I’d sell my soul to the devil if he’d buy such a weakly, puny, piffling little soul, just really to live and be something besides a ‘thoroughly nice girl’ for one short year. ‘A thoroughly nice girl’! Yah!” said Miss Cole in a manner which, whatever else it might have been, was not thoroughly nice.
“That’s a rotten thing to say about any one,” agreed the sympathetic Gloria. “Who calls you that?”
“The girls. You know the way they say it! Well, no wonder. Look at me!” she cried in passionate conclusion to her passionate outburst.