Olive Higgins Prouty

“ Her mother did love New York so! To-morrow when Laurel woke up there would be the rumble of New York outside her window hundreds of feet below.
Very carefully Laurel turned her head upon her folded hands and looked at her mother. She wasn't pretty in the early morning in a battered old iron bed, of course. No lady can be pretty with her mouth hanging open, and her hair all mussy and tousled. Laurel's mother's hair looked like straw, now—dry and dead. ”

“ Dallas adhered to models so scrupulously that Laurel's clothes were never cheap or flashy in appearance. Mrs. Dallas was like certain dressmakers, who know how to impart elegance and refinement to the clothes they make for others, while their own costumes are often extreme and unpleasantly conspicuous. Mrs. Dallas wore a good deal of imitation jewelry herself—large imitation pearls around her neck, large imitation pearls in her ears. But Laurel never wore jewelry at all, except a string of tiny gold beads. ”

“ She pulled on a cheap cotton-crêpe kimono over the nightgown. The kimono had been lavender once, but it had faded to somewhat the same ashen color as her face now. She slipped her feet into some bedroom slippers very much out of repair.
She was the sort of woman whose exterior was never slack or hasty. She was never guilty of substituting a pin for a stitch where it showed, but her negligées and night-clothes were always in a state of neglect and shabbiness. Even Laurel had begun to observe that. ”

“ Some children are having it, and I don't believe for a minute that it would do good strong hair like yours a mite of harm, the way it's done way down at the ends for long curls, so I'm told. One reason I can keep your hair long like some of the most distinguished children, instead of bobbing it off like an errand girl's in a department store, is because I'm always Johnny-on-the-spot with the curling rags. There's nothing worse than long, straight, Indian hair these days. Oh, I do wish I had had the Permanent, but I simply couldn't afford it and your new trunk, too. ”

“ But Laurel's mother told her she ought to be thankful that such things as "cheapest rooms" existed. "It is only by occupying the cheapest room in the house, that you and I can go to nice hotels, where nice people go," Mrs. Dallas explained to her daughter. ”

“ Dallas believed that if a woman was clever, and made enough of that feature of hers which chanced to have remained young, whether it was hair, or figure, or complexion, or neck-and-shoulders, defects and blemishes would become less obvious. ”

“ It hardly seemed possible, for she had been to New York often, and the hotels where she and Laurel summered were very likely places for automobile parties to spend a day and night. Stephen might walk right into the office or dining-room or parlor any day where she chanced to be seated. If he should, he simply mustn't find her too changed. He mustn't find an old woman in place of the unquestionable belle she had been in their set the fall his business took him to New York. ”

“ Unfortunate, of course, that convention deemed that her "young" feature could be exhibited only at night. Still, she told herself, she should be thankful that such inventions as powder and paint existed, corsets, and curling-irons, electric massages, and electric needles. ”