“Who on earth—” Nancy began, trying to see who had spoken.
“Oh, it’s just that horrid Dirk Masters,” Lynn told her disdainfully. “If he isn’t the crudest, coarsest thing I’ve ever seen! Imagine one of the boys from the Hill saying something like that!”
“You were right not to answer him,” Nancy said. “I hear he got in some trouble with the police this summer, he and some of the tough bunch of older fellows he goes around with. It’s too bad, because Anne is a nice girl.”
“Who, his sister?” Lynn looked surprised. “How do you come to know Anne Masters?”
“She had a locker near mine last year,” Nancy explained. “I didn’t really know her, but we did say ‘hello’ to each other every day, and she seemed like a sweet little thing, not at all like Dirk. She was in my algebra class, too, and made good grades. It’s funny, because I hear Dirk’s always flunking everything.”
“I guess so,” Lynn said, “if he’s still in high school. He must be eighteen at least.”
Another bell rang.
“Come on,” Lynn urged, giving her friend’s arm an impatient little tug, “let’s not be late to home room our very first day.”
Nancy fell into step beside her.
“You know,” she confided, “I’m glad to be back. I thought I would be just miserable, coming back to high school without Ernie. We’ve been going together so long, I didn’t see how I’d ever feel right coming back without him. But I do. I mean, I miss him, but still I feel as though the year is going to be fun.”
“Yes,” Lynn agreed, “and being debutantes will be the saving thing! Isn’t it wonderful they thought it up this year? Just think, if they had waited until one year later, we would have missed it, because we’ll be away at college then.”
And somehow, even without Paul to share it with her, senior year rose up before Lynn, interesting and different and exciting.
2
When Lynn got home from school that afternoon, Dodie was already there, curled up on the porch steps, eating an apple.
Lynn looked at her with surprise.
“What are you doing, just sitting there? Don’t tell me Dorothy Eloise Chambers has taken to daydreaming!”
Dodie made a quick face at the sound of her hated name.
“Of course not, silly; I’ll leave that to the love-struck members of the family. I’m waiting for Janie. She’s been to Nassau during the summer, and her parents bought her a whole collection of records there. She’s bringing them over this afternoon.” She raised her eyes and gave her sister a penetrating look. “I know what you’re going to ask now. ‘Is there any mail?’”
Lynn fought down her irritation. Even on days when everything was going perfectly, Dodie had the power to drive her practically insane.
“Well, is there any?”
“Yes,” Dodie answered, leaning back on the step and taking another bite of apple. “You got two epistles—one from darling Paul and one that looks like your deb invitation. At least, it’s in a shiny white envelope with the Peterson address on the back.”
Lynn paused on her way into the house.
“How did you know about the debutante business? It’s just being started.”
“Maybe so,” said Dodie, finishing her apple with one huge bite and tossing the core over the porch railing, “but it’s all over school already. They say almost everybody on the Hill is going to ‘come out.’ Some of the boys are even calling it Debutante Hill and saying you should hang lanterns up and down and have the Presentation Ball right in the middle of the Hill Road.”
She stood up quickly, with a sudden, catlike motion. Dodie was not built like the other two Chambers children. Whereas Ernie and Lynn were both tall and slender, with a graceful quality about them, Dodie was small and supple and animated. On first glance, she did not seem as pretty as Lynn, for there was a sharpness to her that her sister did not have, but when she was with people she liked and wanted to have like her, she had a charm that was all her own. Almost everyone liked Lynn. Fewer people liked Dodie, but the ones who did thought she was absolutely wonderful.
“Where is the mail?” Lynn asked now.
“Oh, around some place,” Dodie replied helpfully. She glanced down the street and caught sight of Janie. “Hi there! My, what a pile of records! You must have bought out Nassau.”
Lynn sighed and turned to go into the house.
Everyone always said, “How nice it must be for you to have a sister just a year younger; somebody to share everything with!”
Well, it would be nice, Lynn thought, if only that were the way it was. But it isn’t—not with Dodie. We have hardly anything in common.
Pausing in the hall, she caught sight of a little pile of mail on the table. Thumbing through it, she quickly located the two letters that were addressed to her.
She opened the one from Paul first. It was the first letter she had ever received from him, and she gazed half-shyly at the hasty, boyish scrawl which would be all that would represent Paul to her until he returned at Christmas time. It was funny to know and care for someone as much as she did for Paul, and yet have his handwriting such an unfamiliar thing. It was like seeing a part of him she had never seen before, meeting and getting to know him in a different way.
After reading the first paragraph, she sighed in relief, for, strange as the handwriting seemed to her, the letter was Paul all over.
Hi, honey! Here I am. It’s a great place, but gee, I miss you. The trip up was a tough one. We drove right on through the night like we said we would, but we still didn’t make the time we hoped for because we had a flat tire and then something went wrong with the radiator. We got the tire changed without much trouble, but you should have seen us trying to patch that radiator up with chewing gum, especially since neither Ernie nor I can stand the darned stuff. There we were, chewing away, with these awful expressions on our faces. People who passed by must have thought we were crazy.
Ern and I have a room together. Not much to it except a couple of beds and a desk. Ernie already has Nancy’s picture stuck on his side of the desk, and my side looks pretty empty. Why not help me fill it by sending me a picture of my girl?
Lynn smiled and turned over the page. It was nice that Paul wrote such a good letter. It made him seem closer somehow. She read with interest his account of the first days of classes, of the beanies the freshmen had to wear, of the piles of books which were now residing on the shelf beside his bed.
The letter ended:
How’s my ring doing? What I said the day we left—I meant it, you know. I miss you so darned much. Love—Paul.
After the heavier envelope, the small white one beside it felt as though it could not contain a thing. It did, however. As Dodie had anticipated, it was the exciting invitation. Lynn Chambers was being officially invited to participate, as a Rivertown debutante, in the Presentation Ball in the spring and in all the parties and festivities leading up to it during the year.
It will be fun, Lynn thought happily, sliding the card back into the envelope and dropping it into her skirt pocket. She felt like showing it to someone, but her father was at his office and her mother did not seem to be around, either. Wandering into the kitchen, Lynn found out from Rosalie, who was busily peeling carrots for dinner, that Mrs. Chambers was at a Hospital Auxiliary meeting.
Dodie was in her room with Janie, playing records. Lynn could hear them laughing together as she passed the door, but there was no sense of breaking in to show the invitation to Dodie. She knew all about it already.
Stopping at the second-floor telephone,