Page:The Eleventh Virgin.pdf/226

Mother Grace thought that it would be tactless to show her enthusiasm for what June was about to do. If she showed the happinesss she felt, she thought it would reveal to June her disapproval of what her daughter had done before.

“As for those three boys, Hugh and Daniel and Kenneth—they’re perfect dears. And the apart- ment is a lovely one. I don’t blame you for prefer- ring it to a furnished room,” she had said. “Of course your friends think nothing of it and neither do their friends. But think of the world. Not your world, I suppose, but my world. If any of my friends ask ‘where’s June living now’ and I say, nonchalantly, ‘with three men over on Waverly Place’—-what do you suppose they’ll think? Not that I’m likely to answer them in any such way.”

She wrinkled her eyebrows considerably over the jail episode and June noticed the little pucker of worry with remorse. “I am a brute,” she thought, “to make her worry so.” And she continued to fret over the inconsequentiality of her life. “Am I going to continue frittering my time away?”

As for the youngest member of the family, he

gloated over his sister’s recent confinement. He sat