Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/46

36 manner to assume towards servants in a private home. In the winter-time she and her mother lived in an apartment hotel. How many servants were there usually, anyhow, and what did you call them, and what fee did you give them? And when, and how, and for what? Or didn't you give them a fee at all? And just how, she wondered, should you dress in a private home? Did a girl of thirteen change three times a day, for instance, and put on an organdie for dinner? And who did her hair? Miss Simpson, it appeared, was not to accompany Laurel to Mrs. Morrison's. Miss Simpson wasn't very good at hair. She never even attempted curls. But she could get snarls out, and brush, and divide fairly well, under direction. Laurel was helpless without somebody.

Laurel mentioned none of her perplexities to her father. If she did he might wonder why it was she knew so little about homes. It might reflect upon her mother. For at the private school she attended in the winter-time, she often heard intimate friends talking about spending nights with each other. Laurel had no such intimate friends at the school. That she hadn't was one of the many galling failures of Mrs. Dallas's ambitions for her daughter. Laurel was not unaware of it. No. Her father should know nothing of her ignorance.

On many topics Laurel was as frank and open with her father as any artless child. But she had her reservations. She had great expanses of thought and experience she never let him glimpse at. She never mentioned her mother's name to him. She made as little reference as possible even to her life