"BAB A SUB-DEB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

see you."

(In giving this Code I am betraying no secrets, as they have
quarreled and everything is now over between them.)
As I had nobody, at that time, and as I had visions of a
Career, I was a man-hater. I acknowledge that this was a pose.
But after all, what is life but a pose?
"Stupid things!" I always said. "Nothing in their heads but
football and tobacco smoke. Women," I said, "are only their
playthings. And when they do grow up and get a little
intellagence they use it in making money."
There has been a story in the school--I got it from one of
the little girls--that I was disapointed in love in early youth,
the object of my atachment having been the Tener in our Church
choir at home. I daresay I should have denied the soft
impeachment, but I did not. It was, although not appearing so at
the time, my first downward step on the path that leads to
destruction.
"The way of the Transgresser is hard"--Bible.
I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear
home for Christmas. Father and my sister Leila, who from now on
I will term "Sis," met me at the station. Sis was very elegantly
dressed, and she said:
"Hello, Kid," and turned her cheek for me to kiss.
She is, as I have stated, but 2O months older than I, and
depends altogether on her clothes for her beauty. In the morning
she is plain, although having a good skin. She was trimmed up
with a bouquet of violets as large as a dishpan, and she covered
them with her hands when I kissed her.
She was waved and powdered, and she had on a perfectly new
Outfit. And I was shabby. That is the exact word. Shabby. If you
have to hang your entire Wardrobe in a closet ten inches deep,
and put it over you on cold nights, with the steam heat shut off
at ten o'clock, it does not make it look any better.
My father has always been my favorite member of the family,
and he was very glad to see me. He has a great deal of tact,
also, and later on he slipped ten dollars in my purse in the
motor. I needed it very much, as after I had paid the porter and
bought luncheon, I had only three dollars left and an I. O. U.
from one of the girls for seventy-five cents, which this may
remind her, if it is read in class, she has forgoten.
"Good heavens, Barbara," Sis said, while I hugged father,
"you certainly need to be pressed."
"I daresay I'll be the better for a hot iron," I retorted,
"but at least I shan't need it on my hair." My hair is curly
while hers is straight.
"Boarding school wit!" she said, and stocked to the motor.
Mother was in the car and glad to see me, but as usual she
managed to restrain her enthusiasm. She put her hands over some
Orkids she was wearing when I kissed her. She and Sis were on