Part 25 (1/2)

”I was just thinking how nice it would be if I had some white fox furs.”

”For heaven's sake!” commented mother. ”When you've already got a new set not two months old!”

Missy didn't reply to that; she didn't want to seem unappreciative.

It was true she had a new set, warm and serviceable, but--well, a short-haired, dark-brown collarette hasn't the allure of a fluffy, snow-white boa.

Mother was going on: ”That ought to do you two winters at least--if not three.”

”I don't know what the present generation is coming to,” put in Aunt Nettie with what seemed to Missy entire irrelevance. Aunt Nettie was a spinster, even older than Missy's mother, and her lack of understanding and her tendency to criticize and to laugh was especially dreaded by her niece.

”Nowadays girls still in knee-skirts expect to dress and act like society belles!”

”I wasn't expecting the white fox furs,” said Missy defensively. ”I was just thinking how nice it would be to have them.” She was silent a moment, then added: ”I think if I had some white fox furs I'd be the happiest person in the world.”

”That doesn't strike me as such a large order for complete happiness,”

observed father, smiling at her.

Missy smiled back at him. In another these words might have savoured of irony, but Missy feared irony from her father less than from any other old person.

Father was a big, silent man but he was always kind and particularly lovable; and he ”understood” better than most ”old people.”

”What is the special merit of these white fox furs?” he went on, and something in the indulgent quality of his tone, something in the expression of his eyes, made hope stir timidly to birth in her bosom and rise to s.h.i.+ne from her eyes.

But before she could answer, mother spoke. ”I can tell you that. That flighty Hicks girl went by here this afternoon wearing some. That Summers boy who clerks in Pieker's grocery was with her. He once wanted Missy to go walking with him and I had to put my foot down. She doesn't seem to realize she's too young for such things. Her brown furs will do her for this season--and next season too!”

Mother put on a stern, determined kind of look, almost hard. Into the life of every woman who is a mother there comes a time when she learns, suddenly, that her little girl is trying not to be a little girl any longer but to become a woman. It is a hard moment for mothers, and no wonder that they seem unwarrantedly adamantine. Mrs. Merriam instinctively knew that wanting furs and wanting boys spelled the same evil. But Missy, who was fifteen instead of thirty-seven and whose emotions and desires were still as hazy and uncorrelated as they were acute, stared with bewildered hurt at this unjust harshness in her usually kind parent.

Then she turned large, pleading eyes upon her father; he had shown a dawning interest in the subject of white fox furs. But Mr. Merriam, now, seemed to have lost the issue of furs in the newer issue of boys.

”What's this about the Summers boy?” he demanded. ”It's the first I've ever heard of this business.”

”He only wanted me to go walking, father. All the rest of the girls go walking with boys.” ”Indeed! Well, you won't. Nor for a good many years!”

Such unexpected shortness and sharpness from father made her feel suddenly wretched; he was even worse than mother.

”Who is he, anyway?” he exploded further.

Missy's lips were twitching inexplicably; she feared to essay speech, but it was mother who answered.

”He's that red-headed boy who clerks in Pieker's grocery.”

”Arthur's a nice boy,” Missy then attempted courageously. ”I don't think he ought to be blamed just because he's poor and--”

Her defence ended ignominiously in a choking sound. She wasn't one who cried easily and this unexpected outburst amazed herself; she could not, to have saved her life, have told why she cried.

Her father reached over and patted her hand.

”I'm not blaming him because he's poor, daughter. It's just that I don't want you to start thinking about the boys for a long while yet. Not about Arthur or any other boy. You're just a little girl.”

Missy knew very well that she was not ”just a little girl,” but she knew, too, that parents nourish many absurd ideas. And though father was now absurd, she couldn't help feeling tender toward him when he called her ”daughter” in that gentle tone. So, sighing a secret little sigh, she smiled back at him a misty smile which he took for comprehension and a promise. The subject of white fox furs seemed closed; Missy was reluctant to re-open it because, in some intangible way, it seemed bound up with the rather awkward subject of Arthur.