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Read Ebook: Flaming Youth by Adams Samuel Hopkins
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Ebook has 2924 lines and 72944 words, and 59 pages
With a sudden pounce the lithe Dee was upon her and held her, half-choked against the wall. "If you breathe a word of this, Scrubs, I'll half kill you."
"Leh--heh-heh--me alone!" whimpered Pat. "I'm not going to tell anybody."
"See that you don't, then."
"You told on me about Warren Graves."
"That was different."
"How, different?"
"You're only a child. You've no business playing silly tricks like that."
"Go back to bed," ordered Dee with a powerful shake which seemed to the unfortunate victim to loosen her eyes in their sockets.
She crept away but paused at the door to say wistfully and sullenly:
"Just the same, I think you might tell me what didn't happen."
Late the next afternoon Fred Browning came to the house, having called up Constance at noon. Dee came down to him.
"Is everything all right, Dee?" he asked anxiously.
The girl nodded.
"Yes. The family didn't wake up. I'll send Con down right away."
But before Constance arrived, little Pat entered the side room where he was nervously waiting. She looked at him solemnly, entreatingly, hesitatingly, then burst out:
"Mr. Browning, will you tell me something?"
Her earnestness amused him. "Why, of course," he said, quite unsuspecting. "I always like to help the young to knowledge. But don't make it too hard."
"What was it that might have happened to Con last night, that the girls wouldn't tell me about?"
He stared at her, completely aghast. "You young devil!" he breathed.
Constance's quick footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the inquirer was fain to flee, unsated of her curiosity. But she peered back, and her breath came quicker as she saw her pretty sister walk straight, eager, and unashamed into the man's waiting arms. Pat deemed it the part of prudence to keep herself aloof the rest of the day.
Later Fred Browning had a cocktail with Mr. Fentriss and a brief talk on the subject of Constance.
And so they were married.
Moth-like, Patricia hovered around the mystic radiance of Constance's wedding festivities. They had let her come home from school for the occasion. Reckoned too young for a bridesmaid and too old for a flower-girl she occupied an anomalous and unofficial position in the party. Dee, who, as maid of honour, had opportunity to exercise her executive faculties in managing the details, found her irritatingly in the way.
"Under your feet all the time," said she to the bride. "The kid is crazy with curiosity. I never heard so many questions."
"Yes," assented Constance fretfully. "She keeps asking me how I feel and staring at me as if I were going to die or have an operation or something."
Dee laughed. "She got hold of Fred yesterday and put him through a catechism while he was waiting for you to come down. He actually looked rattled."
"She's a pest, that child! School doesn't seem to have toned her down a bit."
"At least it's taken the slump out of her shoulders. She's got a kind of boyish swagger that isn't bad. For her kind of style, I mean."
"Oh, style!" repeated the elder sister contemptuously. "She'll never have any more style than a kitten. I wish you'd keep her out of my way."
To accomplish this, however, would have entailed an almost continuous vigilance. The elaborate ceremonial of marriage and giving in marriage with its trappings and appurtenances, its vestigial suggestions of sexual-sacrificial import, its underlying and provocative symbolism had stirred in the youngest member of the family an imagination as inflammable as it was unself-comprehending. Constance's matter-of-fact mind could not interpret the eager and searching scrutiny of her sister, though it made her restless and uneasy and vaguely shamed her. The afternoon before the wedding, Pat tiptoed in upon her as she was resting on Mona's sleeping-porch.
"Connie," she half whispered.
"Well?" returned the bride crossly.
"Where are you going?"
"Going? I'm trying to rest."
"Where are you going after you're married? To a hotel?"
"What do you want to know for?" demanded the elder sister, raising herself on her elbow to look at the younger.
"Nothing. I just wanted to know."
"Well, you won't. Not from me."
"Oh, verra-well! You needn't get all fussed up about it."
The bride sighed, a martyrized sigh.
"What is it?"
"When you get back--when I get back from school, will you tell me?"
"What is the child getting at! Tell you what?"
"Everything."
"I don't know what you mean," fended Constance.
"Yes, you do. You know."
The older girl flushed a slow pink, then laughed. "You're a funny little monkey! Why should you want to know?"
"Well, I've got to go through it sometime, myself, haven't I?" reasoned the girl.
"Oh, have you! Well, you can find out then."
"I think you're mean. You'd tell Dee if she asked you."
Pat reflected before answering. "Don't all girls have 'em?"
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