Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/181

 continued story. I brought you a box of chocolate cherries. Sam wouldn't mind hooking me up himself," Lucy added dryly, as an afterthought, remembering the stage manager's passes.

"How was school?"

"I was terrible today. Master was awfully mad at me," she said dolefully.

"Maybe your diet isn't right. You'd better have an extra ounce of malted milk tonight. Weigh yourself, you look thin."

Lucy's food was planned daily according to a caloric chart except, of course, the sandwiches and salads from that good delicatessen brought home after the show.

"My hips are a quarter inch smaller but I think that's because I'm all dried out from practice," she called from the bathroom where the tape measure hung over the scale.

She scarcely could muster energy to put on her makeup. Same old show night after night. Mother was glad to stay home. I wish I had a girl friend I could talk to. Peggy is nice but repeats the same things. I wish Vida lived in New York. I ought to write to her.

"Why so mopey, Claudel, disappointed in love?" teased Kel Moyle in the wings.

"Maybe Lyle let her down," Dorinda Fay volunteered.

"Lay-ed her down, you mean," said Kel Moyle, quick as a flash on the ad-lib uptake.

Lucy stuck out her tongue. "You'll never do it," she said, and felt slightly better.

The show jogged along, everyone backstage hating the summer tourist audiences who sat on their hands. At intermission there was an unfamiliar sharp knock on her dressing-room door. There was Carly, just as she remembered him, except that his sunburn was darker and his wavy brown hair was cut short.

"What do you mean by not phoning me?" were his first words.

Trembling with pleasure she remembered to frown. "What do you mean—I never called up any man in my life!"

"I'm not any man and you know I've been waiting for you to phone or write."

"Of all the conceit!"

"You're going out with me tonight."

"Who said so?" Rh