FLAMING
YOUTH
147
few hours of jazz, or a snuggling party with some goodlooking boy on the porch, that’ll keep them from suicide for quite a spell.” “I see. They seek the same distractions from the prevailing restlessness ” “You
needn’t
finish,” she broke in.
“Yes; we’re
all
alike. There isn’t a girl that doesn’t go in for spooning if she likes the boy—and a lot of ’em aren’t even too particular about that—except maybe the Standish girls, and they’ve been brought up as if their house was a convent.
At that, Ailsa Standish told me the conundrum
about why girls wear their hair covering their ears. D’you know it?” she enquired with a palpable effect of brazen hardihood. But she turned her head away from the quiet disgust of his look as he answered: “Yes, I know it. But you’ve no business to. It strikes me that you’re in a pretty rotten set.” “It’s the only set in Dorrisdale,” defended Pat sullenly. “And we’re slow compared to some of the other towns.” “Well, if you think it’s worth it,” he began slowly when she cut in, with a sort of cry, throwing out her hands, those large, supple, shapely, capable hands, in a gesture of despair and appeal. “But what’s a girl to do?” “Doesn’t your school give you anything?” “Not a dam’ thing that I don’t want to get and get easy. All they try to do is make it easy for you to get through. They won’t even issue diplomas for fear some of the girls couldn’t pass the exams and their people would get sore on the school. I study when I feel like it, and that isn’t too often.” “Will you do something for me, Pat?” “Yes; I’d love to,” was the eager reply. “Make something of your voice. You can do it with a little work.”
