Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk
pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she laughed a
great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out of her at
the slightest excuse like a small fountain. She was a very pretty girl
with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held back from
her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform; and she had big
black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out into far
more rounded and mature lines than Flip's. "Remember when old Black
and Midnight caught me using cold cream last winter?" she asked Erna.
"She'll let you use all kinds of guk like mentholatum on your face to
keep from getting chapped, but not cold cream because it's make-up."
Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own
sand-colored hair, and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and
her body as long and skinny as a string bean.--That's just it, she
thought.--I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks like
somebody who's going to be a movie star and Erna looks like somebody
who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.
She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would grow up to
be a beauty; but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted it.
The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate, came in.
She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna had
somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria's parents
were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school with four brand
new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of everything, even
toothbrushes. "Esmée Bodet says Gloria's _nouveau riche_," Erna added.
"Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in Canada or someplace sent her
the clothes because she didn't have the coupons."
"Esmée always finds out everything about everybody," Jackie had said.
"I don't know how she does it. She's an awful snoop."
Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started
combing out her tangles.
"Use a brush," Erna suggested.
"Oh, I never use a brush, ducky," Gloria said. "It's bad for a
permanent."
Jackie laughed. "That's silly."
"Your hair's natural, isn't it?" Gloria asked.
"But yes."
"Have you ever had a permanent?"
"No."
"Then don't say its silly. If you brush a permanent all the wave comes
out."
Jackie laughed again and got into bed. "Well, at least you speak
French," she said. "At least we won't have to go through _that_
struggle with you."
"Oh, I went to a French school in Vevey before the war." Gloria gave up
on her tangles. "This is my fifth boarding school. I started when I was
six."
"How are you at hockey?" Erna asked.
Gloria shrugged and said, "Oh, not too bad," in a way that made Flip
know she was probably very good indeed.
"How about you, Philippa?" Erna asked.
Flip admitted, "I'm not very good. I fall over my feet."
"How about skiing?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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