Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/137

 "That's not nice to say about a friend."

"Well, I guess I'm being mean, but I just don't think of Semy Klug as anyone's friend," said Lucy, unchastened.

When Lucy discovered graduation meant that another exchange of gifts with Vida was regrettably in order, she reluctantly tapped the going-to-New-York fund and bought an identical "memory bracelet" substituting her own name. This grudging token Vida wore in simple probity as a symbol of undying friendship. She had planned giving Lucy an enamel bluebird pin for luck but at the last moment saw a woman making gold-wire pins in Lapworth's and ordered one, Lucy's name to be entwined with hers.

"Know what," Lucy said to Mae, "I think we ought to have given each other a pair of those new light-tan silk stockings. They're beautiful the way they make the legs look bare. Maybe we can dye my graduation stockings and my old white silk so we look up to date in New York City."

Aunt Mabel had taken the hint about the white gloves and slip pers.

After supper the day Lucy received her diploma in silk-gloved fingers, she wrote to Miss Shaver and Miss Klemper. Miss Shaver did not answer but Miss Klemper did.

Ilona Klemper's School of The Dance, flourishing, now boasted an assistant for beginners. But Ilona, no nearer fulfillment of her dream of organizing a professional group, was feeling bitter about her wasted talents when Lucy's letter arrived with its two important items of information. Lucy had been posing for a famous artist from Paris France, with artist friends in New York City, and was going to New York to continue her study of dancing. She had practiced all winter what Miss Klemper had taught her because there were no good teachers in Congress. Reading this tribute, Ilona Klemper's spirits rose. Why not leave unappreciative Denver and start a school in New York? Lucy could be her first pupil and who knew how many important people could be met through Lucy's artist friend, Clem Brush. Luckily Aunt Annie's will, now being settled, left her money in addition to Uncle Erwin's. She wrote to Lucy immediately that she too expected to be in New York soon and Lucy should be sure to keep in touch with her.

This letter gave Lucy her first actual sense of New York as a Rh