Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/226

216 "Yes, Richard has always been very discerning. I've often told him he's really almost too particular—too fastidious about girls. This is his first serious affair since he has been in college as far as I know."

"It really is, then, serious?"

"Oh, I couldn't say that. It is obvious, that's all. Laurel is only seventeen, you know—a mere child, though Richard, absurd boy, says she's more like twenty in many ways than most girls he knows of twenty-two. It's serious enough, you see, for him to want to talk about her to me. He confided to me yesterday he intends inviting her to the game in November and to Class Day next June. She was motoring with us yesterday afternoon and we discovered some mutual friends. It seems she visits at Mrs. Cornelius Morrison's, you know, of New York and Long Island. I am on two charitable boards with Mrs. Morrison. She is a charming woman. Bob, my other son, is at St. Lee's, with Mrs. Morrison's oldest boy, Cornelius. They're delightful people."

was about an hour's paddle to Stag Island, as the bird flies, but Richard guided the canoe along the irregular coastline, gliding through the dappled shadows of the beech and birch, of dogwood, and wild hydrangea, and occasional denser stretches of close-growing spruce and hemlock.

For the first ten or fifteen minutes Laurel didn't say a word. Not a single word! She sat in her perch in the bow, and steadily, rhythmically dipped her paddle into the water, drew it back, raised it,