So Big Read Free

followed it up with: “Still, I don’t see why you had to be so mysterious about it.”
    â€œYou just don’t understand, Julie. Writers have to study life at first hand. And if people know you’re studying them they don’t act natural. Now, that day you were telling me about the young man in your father’s shop who looked at you and said——”
    â€œSelina Peake, if you dare to put that in your book I’ll never speak——”
    â€œAll right. I won’t. But that’s what I mean. You see!”
    Julie Hempel and Selina Peake, both finished products of Miss Fister’s school, were of an age—nineteen. Selina, on this September day had been spending the afternoon with Julie, and now, adjusting her hat preparatory to leaving, she clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the sounds of Julie’s importunings that she stay to supper. Certainly the prospect of the usual Monday evening meal in Mrs. Tebbitt’s boarding house (the Peake luck was momentarily low) did not present sufficient excuse for Selina’s refusal. Indeed, the Hempel supper as sketched dish for dish by the urgent Julie brought little greedy groans from Selina.
    â€œIt’s prairie chickens—three of them—that a farmer west of town brought Father. Mother fixes them with stuffing, and there’s currant jell. Creamed onions and baked tomatoes. And for dessert, apple roll.”
    Selina snapped the elastic holding her high-crowned hat under her chignon of hair in the back. She uttered a final and quavering groan. “On Monday nights we have cold mutton and cabbage at Mrs. Tebbitt’s. This is Monday.”
    â€œWell then, silly, why not stay!”
    â€œFather comes home at six. If I’m not there he’s disappointed.”
    Julie, plump, blonde, placid, forsook her soft white blandishments and tried steel against the steel of Selina’s decision.
    â€œHe leaves you right after supper. And you’re alone every night until twelve and after.”
    â€œI don’t see what that has to do with it,” Selina said, stiffly.
    Julie’s steel, being low-grade, melted at once and ran off her in rivulets. “Of course it hasn’t, Selie dear. Only I thought you might leave him just this once.”
    â€œIf I’m not there he’s disappointed. And that terrible Mrs. Tebbitt makes eyes at him. He hates it there.”
    â€œThen I don’t see why you stay. I never could see. You’ve been there four months now, and I think it’s horrid and stuffy; and oilcloth on the stairs.”
    â€œFather has had some temporary business setbacks.”
    Selina’s costume testified to that. True, it was modish, and bustled, and basqued, and flounced; and her high-crowned short-rimmed hat, with its trimming of feathers and flowers and ribbons had come from New York. But both were of last spring’s purchasing, and this was September.
    In the course of the afternoon they had been looking over the pages of Godey’s Ladies’ Book for that month. The disparity between Selina’s costume and the creations pictured there was much as the difference between the Tebbitt meal and that outlined by Julie. Now Julie, fond though defeated, kissed her friend good-bye.
    Selina walked quickly the short distance from the Hempel house to Tebbitt’s, on Dearborn Avenue. Up in her second-floor room she took off her hat and called to her father, but he had not yet come in. She was glad of that. She had been fearful of being late. She regarded her hat now with some distaste, decided to rip off the faded spring roses, did rip a stitch or two, only to discover that the hat material was more faded than the roses, and that the uncovered surface showed up a dark splotch like a wall-spot when a picture, long hung, is removed. So she got a needle and prepared to tack the offending rose in its accustomed place.
    Perched on the arm of a chair near the