The Breaking Point - Page 17/275

That had comforted her. She had determined then never to marry but to

hang around, as he suggested, for the rest of her life. She was quite

earnest about it, and resolved.

She picked up the blue dress and standing before her mirror, held it up

before her. It looked rather shabby, she thought, but the theater was

not like a dance, and anyhow it would look better at night. She had been

thinking about next Wednesday evening ever since Dick Livingstone

had gone. It seemed, better somehow, frightfully important. It was

frightfully important. For the first time she acknowledged to herself

that she had been fond of him, as she put it, for a long time. She had

an odd sense, too, of being young and immature, and as though he had

stooped to her from some height: such as thirty-two years and being in

the war, and having to decide about life and death, and so on.

She hoped he did not think she was only a child.

She heard Nina coming up the stairs. At the click of her high heels on

the hard wood she placed the dress on the bed again, and went to the

window. Her father was on the path below, clearly headed for a walk. She

knew then that Nina had been asking for something.

Nina came in and closed the door. She was smaller than Elizabeth and

very pretty. Her eyebrows had been drawn to a tidy line, and from the

top of her shining head to her brown suede pumps she was exquisite with

the hours of careful tending and careful dressing she gave her young

body. Exquisitely pretty, too.

She sat down on Elizabeth's bed with a sigh.

"I really don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off

at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me

twenty dollars? I'll get my allowance on Tuesday."

"I can give you ten."

"Well, ask mother for the rest, won't you? You needn't say it's for me.

I'll give it to you Tuesday."

"I'm not going to mother, Nina. She has had a lot of expenses this

month."

"Then I'll borrow it from Wallie Sayre," Nina said, accepting her defeat

cheerfully. "If it was an ordinary bill it could wait, but I lost it at

bridge last night and it's got to be paid."

"You oughtn't to play bridge for money," Elizabeth said, a bit primly.

"And if Leslie knew you borrowed from Wallace Sayre--"