Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/185

 poets said. Far from being unhappy when he was away, it was a welcome break to rest and see Peggy and catch up on winter fashions. Mother too was happy Lucy was having such a good time so long as she ate and rested properly.

If I were a poet, Lucy thought, I'd write about October because that's when the city wakes up and you can feel the tickly champagne air and it's time to throw away wilted summer dresses and step out in new fashions. Of course all legs don't look good with mid-calf skirts, and wraparound coats pull up and show them even higher. You have to be careful too to sit with your legs together.

The end of October she became worried and thought she ought to tell Carly. He probably would insist they ought to get married because when he was drunk he always was begging her to elope to Greenwich.

She told him at a tea dance.

"You ought to know what to do, after all I'm not the first," he said angrily, his face hardening.

She stared at him. He must be frightened for her, that's why he acted so angry.

"For heaven's sake, don't look so mad. I'll be all right." Here she was trying to soothe him when he ought to be reassuring her. "I feel squeamish. Let's go to Piselli's and have a glass of champagne while we think of something."

"I'm late as it is for a Benedict dinner."

She waited a day, then telephoned his club leaving word. Two days later she received an unsigned note from Virginia saying he had been called home by his father's illness. Enclosed were three one-hundred-dollar bills, but no word of endearment or solicitude or anything.

She was dazed and frightened not of what she had to face physically but at the revelation of how he felt about her. As though she were the beggar when he had done all the begging. You couldn't blame him if he didn't love her, she wasn't sure either, but at least you expected him to be friendly. It wasn't nice to treat her as a gold-digger when if she'd wanted to she could have married him all the times he asked her when drunk. And she'd never let him give her anything but flowers and now sending her three hundred dollars, as if she were a call-girl, when all she wanted from him was to be a friend. Who needed his dirty three hundred dollars? Well, I guess the joke's on me.

Rh