“You know. Monitoring. Seeing if it’s safe to go in places.”
“That’s my girl!” Kit Sloan was amused again. “Checking with instruments, for safety! All right. I’ll take a chance. Phone you tomorrow.”
She thought about it and nodded. They got up.
Kit grabbed her and gave her a long and large kiss. Nora edged up a little higher on her knees to evaluate it. You could tell, she felt, that Lenore wasn’t particularly keen about the kiss.
But it went on for so long that Lenore seemed to weaken a little. People do, Nora had observed.
Anyhow, Lenore sagged and when he let her go she just looked at him with a very odd expression and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He said, “See you!” and ran away…. Then his car started. Lenore just sat down.
By and large, Nora had nothing against the beautiful girl next door. In fact, Nora thought, she was one of the best types of grown-up people. She paid some attention to others. She could tell when a person was discouraged or being put upon and, if she wasn’t busy (the curse of maturity), she would do something about it. Buy you a sundae, maybe, or even take you to the movies. Right now, for instance, Lenore was on Nora’s side against Nora’s mother on the matter of braids. Lenore argued, sensibly, that braids were a bother to kids and hair would grow back when you wanted it. On the other hand, this business in the summerhouse, Nora felt, was definitely on the two-timing side. Lenore was Charles Conner’s girl and always had been and they would be married someday and, in Nora’s opinion, Lenore was about as good as her brother could be expected to do—though she had occasionally wondered why neither Charles nor Ted ever expressed any interest in exotic types. Nora thought if she were a man she would probably marry either a Polynesian or a gypsy, and there was some idea in her mind of adding Latin-American women, in general, to the list.
Letting herself be kissed limp by this Kit-Whoever was not Fair in Love. But Nora thought it might be Exotic. The man had a handsome-stranger look, though she had apparently known him for umpteen years. Nora felt she herself would like, someday, the type who put open umbrellas over you in stores and began osculation without caring about onlookers. She didn’t believe Charles would do a thing like that.
All in all, she decided to reserve judgment. A woman, she thought, who was soon going to settle down and marry her brother certainly had a right to a few harmless flirtations. Without them, according to Nora’s information from books, taken with her observation of her older brother, a handsome woman like Lenore would probably soon tum into a desiccated shrew with dishpan hands. But such things, Nora realized, shouldn’t go too far.
She wondered what would happen if they did, and it was quite an exciting thing to wonder about.