Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/35

Rh and the taxicab too. She and her mother seldom afforded a taxicab.

"It's my new hat that makes me look grown up," said Laurel with never a reference to the creator of it. Laurel never mentioned her mother to her father. Some fine instinct within her kept her lips as sealed as his. "Don't you like it?" she inquired, a little wistfully, for her father was still gazing at her with a sort of abstracted look which she didn't comprehend.

"What? The hat? Oh, yes. I like the hat very much," he assured her. "It's very nice, and your suit too. I like your suit, Laurel. Only you're growing up, and I don't know that I like that. I don't suppose I shall dare kiss you many years longer in the station before people," he laughed. "Young ladies don't like being kissed in public, I'm told."

Laurel laughed, too—a nervous, pleased little laugh, and moved a little nearer.

"I've finished all the reading," she confided to him proudly.

"You don't mean all of it!"

"Yes, every book you put on the list," she announced, eyes shining.

"Good work, Laurel."

"Oh, it wasn't work. I love to read."

"Do you really?"

"I didn't used to so much. It just seemed to come this year—liking it so, I mean." She turned her face towards him. "When you read a book you like a lot," she went on, "do you try to stop between sentences and look around and think it over, like eating a piece of candy just as slowly as you can, so it will last longer?"