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

their way to something or other.
"Trimmed up like Easter hats, you two!" I said.
"School has not changed you, I fear, Barbara," mother
observed. "I hope you are studying hard."
"Exactly as hard as I have to. No more, no less," I regret
to confess that I replied. And I saw Sis and mother exchange
glances of signifacance.
We dropped them at the Reception and father went to his
office and I went on home alone. And all at once I began to be
embittered. Sis had everything, and what had I? And when I got
home, and saw that Sis had had her room done over, and ivory
toilet things on her dressing table, and two perfectly huge
boxes of candy on a stand and a Ball Gown laid out on the bed,
I almost wept.
My own room was just as I had left it. It had been the
night nursery, and there was still the dent in the mantel where
I had thrown a hair brush at Sis, and the ink spot on the carpet
at the foot of the bed, and everything.
Mademoiselle had gone, and Hannah, mother's maid, came to
help me off with my things. I slammed the door in her face, and
sat down on the bed and _raged_.
They still thought I was a little girl. They _patronized_
me. I would hardly have been surprised If they had sent up a
bread and milk supper on a tray. It was then and there that I
made up my mind to show them that I was no longer a mere child.
That the time was gone when they could shut me up in the nursery
and forget me. I was seventeen years and eleven days old, and
Juliet, in Shakspeare, was only sixteen when she had her
well-known affair with Romeo.
I had no plan then. It was not until the next afternoon
that the thing sprung (sprang?) full-pannoplied from the head of
Jove.
The evening was rather dreary. The family was going out,
but not until nine thirty, and mother and Leila went over my
clothes. They sat, Sis in pink chiffon and mother in black and
silver, and Hannah took out my things and held them up. I was
obliged to silently sit by, while my rags and misery were
exposed.
"Why this open humiliation?" I demanded at last. "I am the
family Cinderella, I admit it. But it isn't necessary to lay so
much emphacis on it, is it?"
"Don't be sarcastic, Barbara," said mother. "You are still
only a Child, and a very untidy Child at that. What do you do
with your elbows to rub them through so? It must have taken
patience and aplication."
"Mother" I said, "am I to have the party dresses?"
"Two. Very simple."
"Low in the neck?"
"Certainly not. A small v, perhaps."
"I've got a good neck." She rose impressively.