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The engine gave a tentative pant, and the conductor, dozing in a corner, nodded sleepily at him from the end of the deserted car. Wearily he sank onto a red plush seat and pressed his hot forehead against the damp window pane.
— ◆ —
Babes in the Woods.
Nassau Literary Magazine (May 1917)
I.
At the top of the stairs she paused. The emotions of divers on springboards, leading ladies on opening nights, and lumpy, bestriped young men on the day of the Big Game crowded through her. She felt as if she should have descended to a burst of drums or to a discordant blend of gems from “Thaïs” and “Carmen.” She had never been so worried about her appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She had been sixteen years old for two months.
“Isabelle!” called Elaine from her doorway.
“I’m ready.” She caught a slight lump of nervousness in her throat.
“I’ve got on the wrong slippers and stockings—you’ll have to wait a minute.”
Isabelle started toward Elaine’s door for a last peek at a mirror, but something decided her to stand there and gaze down the stairs. They curved tantalizingly and she could just catch a glimpse of two pairs of masculine feet in the hall below. Pump-shod in uniform black they gave no hint of identity, but eagerly she wondered if one pair were attached to Kenneth Powers. This young man, as yet unmet, had taken up a considerable part of her day—the first day of her arrival. Going up in the machine from the station Elaine had volunteered, amid a rain of questions and comment, revelation and exaggeration—