Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/20

 The white coat of the druggist rounded into the frilly bosom and confined waist of pretty Miss Shaver, who, at school, was always cut off like a dressmaker's dummy between her desk and blackboard.

Miss Shaver isn't exactly stylish, like Mode magazine, but I'll bet she has a lot of fellas with all that soft brown hair and big brown eyes like Marie Doro. Of course, her hair is neater than Marie Doro's because she is a teacher. Her hand is so graceful when she bends her wrist to look at her gold wrist watch. A wrist watch makes hands look pretty.

The line of Miss Shaver's tapering fingers pointed down to the streaked marble counter and the subject at hand.

What are the girls scared of? Boys are just—boys. Even Opal, and she's grown up, eighteen, is scared. I don't like her Freddie. His mouth looks wet and slippery.

She knew Freddie was looking at her. In fact all the kids were watching her. A mirrored row of round faces like dolls at the Amusement Park waiting to be knocked down. The last suck was clogged by a strawberry and she put the other end of the straw in her mouth to draw it out. The little seeds tickled her tongue and she bit them and rubbed them on the roof of her mouth for the feeling. Apple seeds taste good too. But peach fuzz gives me the creeps. Sometimes she deliberately bit into a peach to make herself shake.

Oh boy, I bet Mother will have the new Mode when I get home.

"Hurry up, Frank, you're such a slowpoke."

Frank doggedly finished his soda and swaggered after her. The chatter died until they were out of sight. Opal crushed the cherry' of her banana split with her small square front teeth, pursing her thin lips into a shrewish pucker. That Lucy Claudel was the limit, all made up like that. Only twelve years, and no good.

Opal was cross. The new brown linen dress on which she had embroidered scallops at neck and sleeves looked now like towel edging instead of its model in The Gentlewoman. Linen always wrinkles so. The pale blue silk side-drape that caressed Lucy's thigh raised peevish hackles.

That snot, I bet she doesn't wear anything under that crazy dress. Some floozie. She thinks she's so smart but she'll never get a husband. Fellas hate girls who throw themselves at fellas that way. She glanced at Freddie uncertainly, and her dislike stretched to include him. She straightened, pulled in her belly, lifted her chin and 8