Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/42

 dewy vermilion lips came together in a long, thin disapproving line. "He's a drug clerk, so they say, but I think he's just a plain soda jerker. Poor Sue, she'll probably marry him and have six children and wear my clothes for the rest of her life."

"Yes," Dot said rather stupidly. She was thinking of Sue Cudahy as she remembered her. Big, blonde Sue who had once whispered a wickedly fascinating tale having to do with Maude McLaughlin and a boy in the Junior High. So wickedly fascinating was the tale that it spread like a plague throughout the school. There was no one in the building that did not hear, and Maude went about her business with her dark eyes leveled at scholars and teachers alike and a brazen inquiry in the depths of them. That was six years ago. Now Maude was Sue's best friend. But was she? It certainly was kind of her to give Sue charity. Not so kind, though, to talk with careless freedom of Sue's circumstances. That could be avoided. Still the fact remained that Maude said nothing ill of Sue and had acted generously toward her. Dot was puzzled. People were hard to understand. It was like a riddle: "When is a friend not a friend?"

"How do you think I look?" Maude asked suddenly. She had lighted a cigarette and was leaning back, idly blowing smoke.

"Gee, fine," said Dot. "Swell diamond you got."

Maude smiled contentedly. She liked other girls to notice her ring. "Isn't it lovely?" she said. "I didn't want Ted to go over a thousand dollars, but he is such a silly."

Dot gasped. Over a thousand dollars! Maude was trying to look very casual after having delivered that piece of information. Girls didn't usually take it like Dottie. They generally made an effort to match Maude's casualness. One had said, "Well, he'd have to go over a thousand, Maude. A girl wouldn't wear what a fellow could