Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/16

6 into a corner of the bottom of her trunk when they had last packed. But there was no need in flaunting it before her mother's eyes. On the fly-leaf of Laurel's "David Copperfield" was written: "To Laurel, from her father," with Christmas and a date below. There had been a whole boxful of them.

"Books!" her mother had said with an exclamation of disappointment when they had been received the preceding December, "a whole pile of old-fashioned books!"

Laurel knew her mother preferred something more modern, when it came to printed matter—informing literature that kept one up-to-date as to what was going on in the world of clothes, and fashion, and society; photo-play magazines, with some theater-talk in them, and a few snappy short stories. The table in the bedroom which Laurel shared with her mother was always littered with a dog-eared collection of such periodicals.

Laurel took the elevator up to that bedroom now. It was after six o'clock, and by this time, she calculated, the ironing-sheet and forbidden electric-iron would be safely tucked out of sight in the bottom of her mother's trunk.

wasn't an attractive bedroom. It was tucked way up under the eaves, had slanting walls, and a single curtainless window. Its furniture was much too big for it—made it look sick and shrunken, like a child in cast-off clothes many sizes too large. The iron bed, white enamel once but nicked and battered now, extended halfway across the window-pane; and