Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/118

108 she remarked, "Here's your little mountain-laurel bud, Mr. Dallas!"

Laurel's real name was Hildegarde—it was as Hildegarde that she was enrolled on the city's records—but she was never called anything but Laurel and "Lollie," and sometimes "Lolliepops." Myrtle Holland had suggested Hildegarde to Stella. It was a name that had style and distinction, she had said. Stella fully intended to adopt it as soon as Lollie was old enough to go to school. But by the time Lollle was old enough to go to school, she had ideas of her own upon the subject. She didn't like Hildegarde.

"It's big and ugly, and has corners," she announced.

the first few weeks of Laurel's existence Stella gloried much more in the pleasing curves her own figure assumed than in the exquisite beauty of Laurel's perfect body. Oh, yes, it was a cute little thing, she acknowledged, but she had wanted a boy—always preferred the opposite sex. She nursed the baby for a week or two, but she warned the doctor, with a gay little nod of her head, she wasn't going to be "a cow" once she got up. How Stephen had cringed when she referred to herself as "a cow." Honestly it was funny how the English language could hurt Stephen.

Laurel was barely five weeks old when Stella donned an evening gown—("Look at me, Stephen," she had exclaimed delightedly; "I'm a perfect sylph.")—and went to an evening dance.