self prevented her scrambling wildly off the jingling sleigh and running home. How could Lucy let Harry touch her lips, that awful Harry about whom dreadful stories were rumored, especially about the girl who got in trouble and whose family was bought off by Harry's father.
Norman finally stopped playing and yawned. He splayed Vida's cold fingers with his own, drew her close, and her congealed blood began to flow like a dreamy gentle summer brook. "Come on, Vida, let me put my head on your shoulder." He nudged away her coat collar with a long nose and found a soft spot. A babbling affectionate spring welled at the base of her throat. Queer that it took her so long to appreciate him. He was refined too, not messy like the other drooling boys. Maybe he would kiss her later. She was uncomfortable but afraid to move because he was asleep.
Quiet enveloped the sleigh, broken only by small shiftings, sighs and cheeps of kisses like the stirrings of birds in summer night trees. Sleighbells jingled in monotonous syncopation to clopping hoofs. A waft from the periodic wind-letting of the horses distended Lucy's pink nostrils. "My goodness, horses have no manners."
The boys laughed as the girls tsk-tsked in a united front against such vulgarity. Vida too was uncomfortable. She could not decide whether Lucy should be so frank. Lucy said anything.
Back into streetlights and, after coy rebuffs for snatched last-minute kisses, the sleigh halted at Birdie's house.
"Aren't boys awful?" Lucy remarked to Vida. "My clothes are all wrinkled, and I have a piece of hay in my pants."
Vida was cross. Norman had not kissed her. Not that she was crazy about him, but he needn't have slept all the way. She was worried about the time, too, and hoped it wasn't as late as she feared.
"Let's hurry," she said anxiously, "my mother will be crazy when I get home."
The Lucy who answered was strange and evasive. After all, you couldn't always have Vida tagging along. "Maybe you'd better not wait for me. Harry is taking me for a hamburger."
Vida felt unwanted by everyone as she ran and slid home.
Harry's tin lizzie was parked in front of Lee's house, a half block away. The Fourth High flank watched them escape. It was half-past eleven when Harry chugged up to a ramshackle wooden building on the edge of town. Lucy knew that in Congress restaurants closed at nine-thirty except for the diner near the depot where she thought Harry was taking her.
