Page:The Eleventh Virgin.pdf/28

Rh else did. Jim was a man; he was eighteen and worked on a ten-twenty-thirty cent stage as a hypnotist and wrote poetry. All the girls on the block were crazy about him. His attentions appealed to June’s sense of vanity. Mr. Henreddy, in one of his recurrent moods of superiority, would not let his daughter play with the girls of the neighborhood nor join in their good times—Mother Grace assisting him in carrying out his idea of exclusiveness—and June envied them and tried to get even with them by inciting their jealousy. Every evening she sat on the front porch and listened to Jim’s poetry. Then one day Mother Grace accused her, laughing lightly, of having a “case” on him which shamed and disgusted June so that she fled whenever he was around.

But she had never before been troubled by thoughts of a man’s arms and lips. her mind had never seemed to be connected with her body and it was strange and wonderful that a thought, a glance, could make a little shiver of delight run through her.

The day June fell in love, Mother Grace was in the hospital. June had just received word from Mr. Henreddy that she had a little brother and that he hoped she was glad. She was glad, but not in the way he thought. Tension was relived; a subject was no longer avoided in the house; Mother