her legs up to—Opal's bile rose as she thought of her own shapeless legs. She always bobs up where she isn't wanted. Freddie's grin made her sick. Her small thin lips drooped. The excitement of the men, like Frank and the boys in the drugstore, when Lucy was around was—disgusting. Just like dogs. No man ever looked at her like that, not even Freddie. The Hope Chest in her bedroom with its piles of hemmed and embroidered linens became a suffocating coffin of domesticity. I won't do it. I'll use those towels for scrub rags. She jerked savagely at her peg-top skirt and pulled in her stomach. Her discontented gaze roved to find some spot devoid of Lucy's pervading presence. Freddie's father was leaning toward a large bald man with grey mustache and important manner. He was, she knew, Oscar Fleisher, visiting Bison and sausage potentate from Kansas City. Kansas City was really quite a cosmopolitan city she had heard, almost as big as Chicago. Freddie, dangling on Lucy's Circean wink, was oblivious to his loss. Mr. Fleisher, for the moment, was oblivious to Opal. No one was oblivious to Lucy.
At the end of this unorthodox rendition of "Doll Dance" Lucy returned to Miss Klemper's instruction for acknowledging applause. Stooping forward on right foot she swung the left leg back in an arc, shifted balance to it, and sank into a stiff curtsey, her head a little to the side, smiling. Then she rose, blew a kiss right and left, and ran the length of the hall, her arms outstretched breasting the surf of applause.
The thumping silk slippers now were tipped with dirt. By the time she reached the cloakroom Mr. Brady had taken a deep breath, as had his fellow Bisons, and he was introducing the alcoholic comic.
"You were wonderful, just wonderful, Pussy," said moist-eyed Mae, though still adjusting herself to Lucy's startling innovations in a "Doll Dance."
"Do you think I could have another sandwich?"
Mae hesitated. Even with Lucy's success, and the earlier urging of Mrs. Brown Satin, she was timorous, but as no one was looking said, "I shouldn't think they'd mind—there's still a big pile, and I didn't have the one they offered me."
Mae packed as Lucy ate.
"I'm not going to take off my makeup until I get home."
It was a statement not a question because in the past hour she had become a real dancer. Lucy finished her sandwich and would have taken another if Mae had nodded.
