She slid into the deep-seated lap of an enormous leather armchair near by. Through the big front doors she could catch a glimpse of a group of girls about her own age, seated on the piazza railing, swinging their legs, and eating candy. One of the girls was the daughter of the pretty Mrs. Cameron, now playing bridge in the far corner. Laurel did not join the girls. She didn’t give mothers at a summer hotel the second opportunity to call, “Come, Dear, I think you’d better come in now,” to their children when she became one of a group; nor the children themselves to link arms and move away from her.

This year she had scarcely given them a first opportunity. Somehow things had been worse this year than ever before, and right from the start, too.

She looked up at the loud-ticking clock. It was only quarter after four. Her mother had told her that she must amuse herself this afternoon. She always had to do that, whenever her mother was going to be busy in the bedroom they shared, “washing out a few things.” There wasn’t room for two, when there was laundering going on.

2

LAUREL SIGHED, ROSE from the big chair and wandered over to the glass-covered case of candies; stared at them for a minute or two; turned away; listlessly observed a rack of picture postcards. Finally she meandered down a long corridor past a series of cardrooms to a little pink parlor at the end. From behind a cushion on a sofa, she drew forth a book, and tucking it under her arm returned to the big chair. She curled herself up in it, child-fashion, and opened the book well toward the middle. She began to read.

The old man woke up and left his chair. The game of bridge came to an end. The four players disappeared. The group of girls on the railing outside drifted apart. But Laurel didn’t once glance up. She hardly moved for a whole hour and a half except to turn the pages of the book. The hotel had suddenly ceased to exist for Laurel Dallas. Her heart was bleeding for David Copperfield.

Laurel never read David Copperfield when her mother was with her. Today the book, as usual, would be returned to its hiding place behind the cushion in the little parlor when she had finished with it. Laurel never carried it with her upstairs for her mother to catch a glimpse of and make remarks upon. Of course her mother had to know that she had tucked it, with several other books, into a corner of the bottom of her trunk when they had last packed. But there was no need in flaunting it before her mother’s eyes. On the fly-leaf of Laurel’s David Copperfield was written: “To Laurel, from her father,” with Christmas and a date below. There had been a whole boxful of them.