Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/265

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arrived at the apartment on Commonwealth Avenue at eleven o'clock that night. She telephoned to Laurel from the Back Bay station that she would be out in half an hour, and when she puffed up the last flight of stairs—it grew hotter and hotter as she approached the roof—Laurel, in her thin sleeveless nightgown, with her hair pulled tightly back and braided, was in the hall to meet her.

"I've made some lemonade, mother. It's on the ice. And there's some cold watermelon. Come in and get those horrid hot things off. I've pulled the bed out where it will get the breeze, if there is any, in the early morning. How is Mrs. McDavitt and the children?"

Ten minutes later, Stella, nightgowned and hair pulled back and braided, too, sat on the back porch under the clothes-reel and drank lemonade, and ate cold watermelon, and gazed at Lollie, seated on top of the coal-box with her bare arms locked about her knees, not talking much, looking up at the lop-sided moon that had been full three nights ago on Stag Island.

Funny place, thought Stella, for the lovely Miss Laurel Dallas, who would be staggering New York society one of these days, to be perched in mid-summer. Oh, if she could only tell the poor suffering little kiddie (for she was suffering—she had been pretty crazy about that Grosvenor boy, Stella guessed)—if she could only tell her it was only for a short time now; that everything would