Laurel continued her blank stare. Her eyes took on a vacant, far-away expression, as if she had suddenly fallen to day-dreaming, and was thousands of miles away from the hotel lobby and the lady. In reality she was keenly conscious of the moment and the place, and was keenly suffering, too. Laurel didn’t like being rude. She would like to answer every question ever asked her. Only she couldn’t always. People nudged, and smiled, and raised their eyebrows sometimes.

“Well,” said the lady, less sweetly now, “I’m sure your mother will miss you, whomever you’re going to see, for she doesn’t seem to have made many intimate friends in the hotel.”

How unkind! How cruel! It swept over Laurel that she would like to make a face at this woman—this hateful, ugly woman. (She was ugly. She had a complexion like dough. Beside her mother’s rose-petal cheeks, hers were like toadstools. Beside her mother’s bright hair, hers was like dull pewter.) Laurel glowered at the lady’s retreating back. She had perfectly enormous hips!

“What was Mrs. Lamson saying, Kiddie?” asked Laurel’s mother a moment later bustling up to her.

“Nothing much.”

“Being nice?”

“Oh, yes,” said Laurel brightly. Her mother was terribly anxious for people to be “nice,” and Laurel almost as anxious that she should believe them so. “She thought my new hat was ever so pretty,” she prevaricated smoothly.

“I bet she didn’t guess how little it cost,” shrugged Mrs. Dallas.

“Well, I didn’t tell her,” said Laurel.

When Laurel kissed her mother good-bye on the platform at the station, there wasn’t a tear in her eyes, although her mother’s pretty cheeks were all smeared with them underneath the concealing big-meshed white veil. The arms she put around her mother’s neck didn’t cling nor clutch, like the arms that held her so tightly, and her kiss was cool and brief. But in her throat there was a big lump, and about her mouth there was a drawn, set look that meant she was clenching her teeth together hard, as she stood by the car window, and waved and waved to the lovely pink-and-white figure left behind in the smoke.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

1

LAUREL COULD ALWAYS pick out her father in the waiting group behind the gate at the end of the long granolithic walk outside the train in New York, twenty or thirty seconds before he saw her. This was because her eyes were so keen and sharp, while her father was a little near-sighted; and because, too, there was a change in Laurel from year to year, while her father always looked the same.