Faithfully yours, Zebedee (Czar) Kennedy

25

“THEY’RE GOOD,” Louise Husack announced at the end of what Dina termed the Style Show, “but they’re dowdy.”

Dowdy. Christine had never actually heard this old-fashioned term used before, and certainly never as applied to her own clothes. As she stood now in her good black nylon slip edged with sturdy black lace her face reflected a shocked unbelief. This adjective was used to describe her Baranof-bought college outfit. Instinctively, protectively, her bare arms hugged herself, a palm cupping either elbow. The narrow black line of the slip’s shoulder strap accented the firm fine beauty of her arms and her breast. Her hair, as the result of having had dresses and blouses and pullovers dragged over its lavish golden mass, now tumbled in a confusion that might have seemed Medusa-like in an older woman but that only enhanced the lusciousness of this girl’s dishabille. As she had pulled garments off and on before the critical gaze of Mrs. Dave Husack and Dina Drake she had become warmer and more uncomfortably warm (like a true Alaskan, she found Outside temperatures tropical) and increasingly disturbed and even resentful, this last a rare emotion in a girl usually so good-tempered. Her face had taken on a flush unusual in that clear peach-colored skin. The high cheekbones wore a brilliant patch of deep pink as though an inexperienced hand had applied an injudicious dab of rouge.

Dina Drake, staring pitilessly at this girl standing before her in Louise Husack’s overstuffed rose-colored bedroom, realized that here was a human structure as nearly flawless in youth, health, intelligence, beauty and artlessness as such an example can be. She felt a sudden sharp stricture as though an unseen needle had darted a stitch through her heart.

Chris remembered now what Czar had said before she had left Baranof for Seattle. “Listen, Bridie. I want Christine to have the best. Dresses and coats and so on. None of this parka and mukluk stuff. That’s fine for Alaska, but Seattle is different.”

Now standing before her two Seattle inquisitors, Chris flung her arms out in a gesture of explanation and protest, mingled. “But Bridie and I bought them just before I came here, we get the new autumn styles early in Baranof because it gets cold the end of August or early Septem—why, the Hollywood Fashion Shop and the Miss and Mrs. Baranof Shop—they advertise Miss and Mrs. Never Misses—get the newest California sports things and even New York styles ordered absolutely direct.”

The brocade rose-colored bed, the satin chairs, the handsome inlaid fruitwood tables were atumble with dresses, sweaters, blouses. No hats.

Dina looked at the girl’s hair. Her eyes narrowed, she smiled amusedly, though her tone was kind. “Poor kid, you’ll have to chop that stuff off, to begin with.”

“Chop what?”

“That floor mop. Honestly, child, I haven’t seen anything like that since they stopped reading me ‘Goldilocks’ or whatever her name was, and the ‘Three Bears.’ ”

Louise Husack, who had been examining a pink silk party dress (Chris’s absolute best) that lay in her lap, turning it inside out to inspect the seams and shaking her head over the crude finish, now looked up at Christine as though actually seeing her for the first time and then, slowly, her gaze turned toward Dina and that gaze, too, had in it a quality of new vision.