Page:Our Little Girl (1923).pdf/33

 estate which provided what the girls of Miss Blagden’s School called a marrying income.

Arnold’s picture would look well on the dresser and it would impress the girls who came to see Dorothy—but her mother would be sure to make such remarks that it would have to be removed. Mrs. Loamford wasn’t cooperative where Arnold was concerned. Otherwise she would have thought of asking him to attend the little dinner and theatre party for Dorothy.

Mr. Loamford, in fact, had made some such suggestion, but his wife had declined to consider it.

“I like Arnold Deering,” she had admitted, “but it’s too pointed to invite him. Don’t be absurd, Samuel. It'll give Dorothy wrong ideas, and she’s too young to think of anything like that.”

This vague reference to wrong ideas and “anything like that” usually served to dispose of any conversational starts which might lead to a discussion of Dorothy’s matrimonial prospects.

“He’s a good, clean young man of good family,” Mrs. Loamford conceded, “and very nice, too. I really like him, but Dorothy’s only a child, and——”

Here came an inevitable clincher.

“Then there’s her career to be considered.”

The dinner party, therefore, was purely a family affair. Dorothy’s modest—a frock, a sleeveless little more modest creation in mauve, was than necessary, Dorothy thought—but effective. It set off her large gray-blue eyes prettily and it blended with her thick, dark brown hair, which had been waved for the occasion and puffed out becomingly over the ears. It was a little long—what was the use of having slender ankles and fetching legs if you couldn’t show them?—but it gave to her misses’