Life didn’t seem at all a joke to Jane as she skipped down Pine Street, that crisp October morning, arm in arm with her friends. She was wondering whether André would be waiting under the Water Works Tower. And whether Flora and Muriel would try to tease them if he were. And what he would think, if they did. And what her mother would say if she knew that André was waiting almost every morning, when she reached Chicago Avenue, waiting to walk up the Drive with her carrying her school books. Funny French André, whom Flora and Muriel always laughed at, a little, and of whom her mother and Isabel didn’t at all approve, because he was French and a Roman Catholic and went to church in the Holy Name Cathedral and lived in a little flat in the Saint James Apartments and had an English mother who wore a funny-looking feather boa and a French father who was a consul, whatever that was, and spoke broken English and didn’t know many people.
Muriel was talking of Rosalie’s coming-out party. There was to be a reception and a dinner and a dance and Muriel was going to sit up for it and have a new pink muslin dress, ordered from Hollander’s in New York.
Isabel was going to have a reception, too, but no dinner, as far as Jane knew, and certainly no dance. Jane’s clothes were all made on the third floor by Miss McKelvey, who came twice every year, spring and fall, for two weeks, taking possession of the sewing machine in the playroom and turning out an incredible number of frocks and reefers and white percale petticoats with eyelet embroidery. She made lots of Isabel’s dresses, too, and some of Jane’s mother’s. And doll clothes, on the side, for Jane, though Jane was too old for that, now. She hadn’t looked at her doll for nearly two years. That wonderful French doll with real hair and eyes that opened and shut, that her mother had brought her from Paris on the memorable occasion, five years before, of her trip abroad.
Jane had always loved Miss McKelvey from the days that she used to ride on her knees when she wound the bobbins. And she always liked her new clothes. It was only when Flora and Muriel talked of theirs that it occurred to her to disparage them. Flora and Muriel had lovely things. Dresses from New York and coats made at real tailors’. But Jane didn’t want them, really. At least she wouldn’t have wanted them if Flora and Muriel had only let her alone. She hadn’t wanted them, at all, until she had met André. Now she couldn’t help wondering what André would think if he could see her at a real dance, some evening, in a pink muslin dress from Hollander’s. Of course she and André didn’t go to dances. But there would be the Christmas parties and if she had a pink muslin, just hanging idle in the closet, perhaps she could wear it to dancing school or even to supper, some Saturday night at André’s, if he ever asked her again and her mother would let her go.
Not that a mere pink muslin could ever make Jane look like Muriel. Jane knew that all too well. Or like Flora. She hadn’t any curls, to begin with, and she simply couldn’t look stylish. The way Isabel did, for instance, in any old rag. Isabel was just as pretty as Muriel’s sisters, no matter what she wore.
There was André, school books in hand, loitering under the Water Works Tower. He grinned a little sheepishly as the trio approached him. Flora and Muriel were pinching her elbows.
“Don’t be silly!” she implored.
“He’s silly!” tittered Flora.
“No, he’s not!” she declared hotly.
They only giggled.
“Well, anyway, he’s sissy,” said Muriel accusingly. “Why doesn’t he play with the other boys?”
By this time they had reached him.
“Hello,” said André.
“Hello,” said Jane.
He took her school books. Flora shook her curls at him. They shone like burnished gold against the rough chinchilla cloth of her navy blue reefer. Muriel rolled her great blue eyes under her wide hat brim. Her eyelashes were very long and curly and her cheeks were rose red in the sharp lake breeze. André grinned. He dropped into step at Jane’s elbow. They walked half a block in silence. Almost in silence. Jane could hear Muriel’s stifled giggles. Then Flora leaned mockingly forward. She looked across Muriel’s mirthful countenance to Jane’s disdainful one and then on, to André’s cold young profile.
“I’ll race you to the corner, Muriel,” she said wickedly. Muriel dropped Jane’s elbow.
“Two’s company!” she heard Muriel cry as they set off in a rush. Jane felt a little foolish. Then André glanced shyly down at her. He met her eyes and smiled. She looked hurriedly away, but she knew, instantly, that everything was all right. Let them be silly. It didn’t matter. And she did want to talk to André. André talked of things she liked. André had seen lots of plays, here and in New York and in Paris. And André had lived abroad. He had been born in Fontainebleau and he had visited in London and he had crossed the ocean three times since his father had come to America. André had read everything and he had a little puppet theatre and an awfully good stamp collection and a work shop in his bedroom where he modelled in clay and made some very clever things, bookends and paperweights and statues, that his father had cast, sometimes, for his mother to keep. André went to a class every Saturday morning at the Art Institute. A life class, so Flora and Muriel had said with a telling titter. Jane devoutly hoped her mother wouldn’t hear of that.
André was sixteen and he wasn’t going to college. Not to Harvard or Yale or Princeton,
