wrists arching. Lilian had been the belle of Westlake. A jutting ledge of hat sprang out from over her pompadour; her shirtwaist was dragged down in a kangaroo pouch to a deep point; her high-boned collar foamed at the top with puckered Valenciennes lace. Charlotte, gazing at her, hated her own old traveler's ruching, and longed for a straight-front corset instead of a Ferris waist. She was a scarlet mass of joy when Lilian said, "Hello, Charlotte"; she wore an artificial violet, dropped from Lilian's muff, in a small muslin bag hung around her neck, and kissed it good night every night.
After that she "had a case on" Herbert Watts. She knew him only by sight, a pretty youth of sixteen, with curly black hair, who carried the processional cross at St. Stephen's, and took up the collection in Sunday school. Dotty Jackson and Gladys Blunt knew all about it, and always put his name into apples, when seeds were to be counted, or wrote it on slips to dream on with wedding cake. And often they accompanied her on her shaken pilgrimages past the Watts' small pale-pink house, on the other side of the railroad tracks, where the sacred flame of the Watts' parlor stove could be seen between draped lace curtains. Charlotte dreamed of being run over outside that house, and being carried in to die, while Herbert knelt beside her. Or perhaps spending years of inspirational invalidism on the Watts' sofa—a new and beautiful
