That had comforted her. She had determined then never to marry but to
hang around, as he suggested, for the rest of her life. She was quite
earnest about it, and resolved.
She picked up the blue dress and standing before her mirror, held it up
before her. It looked rather shabby, she thought, but the theater was
not like a dance, and anyhow it would look better at night. She had been
thinking about next Wednesday evening ever since Dick Livingstone
had gone. It seemed, better somehow, frightfully important. It was
frightfully important. For the first time she acknowledged to herself
that she had been fond of him, as she put it, for a long time. She had
an odd sense, too, of being young and immature, and as though he had
stooped to her from some height: such as thirty-two years and being in
the war, and having to decide about life and death, and so on.
She hoped he did not think she was only a child.
She heard Nina coming up the stairs. At the click of her high heels on
the hard wood she placed the dress on the bed again, and went to the
window. Her father was on the path below, clearly headed for a walk. She
knew then that Nina had been asking for something.
Nina came in and closed the door. She was smaller than Elizabeth and
very pretty. Her eyebrows had been drawn to a tidy line, and from the
top of her shining head to her brown suede pumps she was exquisite with
the hours of careful tending and careful dressing she gave her young
body. Exquisitely pretty, too.
She sat down on Elizabeth's bed with a sigh.
"I really don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off
at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me
twenty dollars? I'll get my allowance on Tuesday."
"I can give you ten."
"Well, ask mother for the rest, won't you? You needn't say it's for me.
I'll give it to you Tuesday."
"I'm not going to mother, Nina. She has had a lot of expenses this
month."
"Then I'll borrow it from Wallie Sayre," Nina said, accepting her defeat
cheerfully. "If it was an ordinary bill it could wait, but I lost it at
bridge last night and it's got to be paid."
"You oughtn't to play bridge for money," Elizabeth said, a bit primly.
"And if Leslie knew you borrowed from Wallace Sayre--"