Bab: A Sub-Deb | Page 8

a checked suit with a small
mustache--the young man, of course, not the suit. Unluckaly, he was
rather blonde, and had a dimple in his chin. But he looked exactly as
though his name ought to be Harold.
I may say here that I chose "Harold," not because it is a favorite name
of mine, but because it is romantic in sound. Also because I had never
known any one named Harold and it seemed only discrete.
I took it home in my muff and put it under my pillow where Hannah
would find it and probably take it to mother. I wanted to buy a ring too,
to hang on a ribbon around my neck. But the violets had made a fearful
hole in my thirteen dollars.
I borrowed a stub pen at the stationer's and I wrote on the photograph,
in large, sprawling letters, "To YOU from ME."
"There," I said to myself, when I put it under the pillow. "You look like
a photograph, but you are really a bomb-shell."
As things eventuated, it was. More so, indeed.
Mother sent for me when I came in. She was sitting in front of her
mirror, having the vibrater used on her hair, and her manner was
changed. I guessed that there had been a family Counsel over the poem,
and that they had decided to try kindness.
"Sit down, Barbara," she said. "I hope you were not lonely last night?"
"I am never lonely, mother. I always have things to think about."
I said this in a very pathetic tone.
"What sort of things?" mother asked, rather sharply.
"Oh--things," I said vaguely. "Life is such a mess, isn't it?"
"Certainly not. Unless one makes it so."

"But it is so difficult. Things come up and--and it's hard to know what
to do. The only way, I suppose, is to be true to one's beleif in one's
self."
"Take that thing off my head and go out, Hannah," mother snapped.
"Now then, Barbara, what in the world has come over you?"
"Over me? Nothing."
"You are being a silly child."
"I am no longer a child, mother. I am seventeen. And at seventeen there
are problems. After all, one's life is one's own. One must decide----"
"Now, Barbara, I am not going to have any nonsense. You must put
that man out of your head."
"Man? What man?"
"You think you are in love with some drivelling young Fool. I'm not
blind, or an idot. And I won't have it."
"I have not said that there is anyone, have I?" I said in a gentle voice.
"But if there was, just what would you propose to do, mother?"
"If you were three years younger I'd propose to spank you." Then I
think she saw that she was taking the wrong method, for she changed
her Tactics. "It's the fault of that Silly School," she said. (Note: These
are my mother's words, not mine.) "They are hotbeds of sickley
sentamentality. They----"
And just then the violets came, addressed to me. Mother opened them
herself, her mouth set. "My love is like a white, white rose," she said.
"Barbara, do you know who sent these?"
"Yes, mother," I said meekly. This was quite true. I did.
I am indeed sorry to record that here my mother lost her temper, and
there was no end of a fuss. It ended by mother offering me a string of

seed pearls for Christmas, and my party dresses cut V front and back, if
I would, as she phrazed it, "put him out of my silly head."
"I shall have to write one letter, mother," I said, "to--to break things off.
I cannot tear myself out of another's Life without a word."
She sniffed.
"Very well," she said. "One letter. I trust you to make it only one."
I come now to the next day. How true it is, that "Man's life is but a jest,
a dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best!"
I spent the morning with mother at the dressmakers and she chose two
perfectly spiffing things, one of white chiffon over silk, made modafied
Empire, with little bunches of roses here and there on it, and when she
and the dressmaker were hagling over the roses, I took the scizzors and
cut the neck of the lining two inches lower in front. The effect was
posatively impressive. The other was blue over orkid, a perfectly
passionate combination.
When we got home some of the girls had dropped in, and Carter
Brooks and Sis were having tea in the den. I am perfectly sure that Sis
threw a cigarette in the fire when I went in. When I think of my sitting
here alone, when I have done NOTHING, and Sis