20
FLAMING
YOUTH
ment was established, or, rather, encouraged to grow into
being.
It was ordained that each of the girls should
have her own room to hold lke a castle, into which not even the parents might intrude unbidden, and for which
the occupant was held responsible. Constance’s room was luxurious, lazy, filled with photographs mainly of groups —
in which her charming face was always central. The special mark of Mary Delia’s was its white and airy |
Kemptness. Patricia’s was a mess of clothing and odds and ends, tossed hither and thither and left to lie as they fell until a temporary access of orderliness imspired the child to clean up. It suggested a room in which no dow was opened at night. Fentriss called it the hurrah’s nest. Through this feminine environment he moved lke a tolerant but semi-detached presiding genius. His profession as consulting engineer took him early to the city and that, or something else, often kept him late. Being a considerate though rather selfish person, he invariably telephoned when detained over dinner time, which made the less difference in that there were always two or three men dropping in after golf, hopeful of an invitation to
stay: Harry Mercer or the Grant twins, or Sam Gracie, or. one of the Selfmdges, father or son. Envious mothers whispered that Mrs. Fentriss was trying te catch Emslie Selfridge for Constance, and that it might not be as good a match as she supposed; things weren’t going any too well at the Selfridge factory since the strike. They also wondered acidly that Ralph Fentriss was so easy as to let his pretty wife go about so much with Steve Selfridge, who was almost old enough to be her father, it was true, but whose reputation was that of a decidedly unwithered age. It would no more have occurred to Fentriss to raise objections over Mona’s going where she pleased, ith
win
