(She produces a small notebook.) Sit down and be quiet. (Narry sits down anxiously on a chair which emerges from the screen of dresses. Helen returns to the pier-glass, and the sequence of expressions passes over her face in regular rotation.) Now, I’ve made some notes here—let’s see. I’ve made notes on things you must do. Just as I have thought of them, I have put them down. (She seats herself somewhere and becomes severely judicial.) First, and absolutely, you must not sit out with anyone. (Helen looks bored.) I’ve stood for it at your other dances and heaven knows how many dances of other people, but I will not, understand me, I will not endure to look all over for you when some friend of mine, or of your father’s, wants to meet you. You must tonight, you must all season—I mean you must stay in the ballroom, or some room where I can find you when I want you. Do you understand?
Helen—(Yawning) Oh, yes! You would think I didn’t know what to do.
Mrs. Halycon—Well, do it if you know how. I will not endure finding you in a dark corner of the conservatory, exchanging silliness with anyone, or listening to it.
Helen—(Sarcastically) Yes, listening to it is better.
Mrs. Halycon—And you positively cannot give more than two dances to young Cannel. I will not have everyone in town having you engaged before you have had a fair chance.
Helen—Same old line. You’d think from the way you talk that I was some horrible old man-chaser, or someone so weak and wobbly that you’d think I’d run off with someone. Mother, for heaven’s sake—
Mrs. Halycon—My dear, I am doing my very best for you.
Helen—(Wearily) I know. (She sits down decidedly on another invisible chair.) Mother, I happen, my dear, to have four dances with John Cannel. He called up, asked me for four of them, and what could I say? Besides, it’s a cut-in dance, and he would cut in as much as he wants anyhow. So what’s the difference? (Becoming impatient) You can’t run everything now, the way they did in the early nineties.
Mrs. Halycon—Helen, I’ve told you before that you can’t say early nineties to me.
Helen—Don’t treat me like a child then.
Mr. Halycon comes in. He is a small man with a large appearance and a board-of-directors heartiness.
Mr. Halycon—(Feeling that the usual thing is expected of him) Well, how is my little debutante daughter? About to flit into the wide, wide world?
Helen—No, Daddy, just taking a more licensed view of it.
Mr. Halycon—(Almost apologetically) Helen, I want you to meet a particular friend of mine, a youngish man—
Helen—About forty-five?
Mrs. Halycon—Helen!
Helen—Oh, I like them forty-five. They know life, and are so adorably tired-looking.
Mr. Halycon—And he is very anxious to meet you. He saw you when you came into my office one day, I believe—and let me tell you, he is a brainy man. Brought up from Providence by the—
Helen—(Interrupting) Yes, Daddy, I’ll be delighted to meet him. I’ll—
Enter Cecilia, Helen’s younger sister. Cecilia is sixteen, but socially precocious and outrageously wise on all matters pertaining to her sister. She has blonde hair, in contrast to her sister’s dark brown; and, besides, remarkable green eyes with a wistful trusting expression in them. However, there are very few people whom she trusts.
Cecilia—(Calmly surveying the disorder around her) Nice-looking room.
Helen—Well, what do you expect? Nothing but milliners, dressmakers and clumsy maids all day. (Narry rises and leaves the room.) What’s the matter with her?
Mrs. Halycon—You’ve hurt her feelings.
Helen—Have I? What time is it?
Mrs. Halycon—Quarter after eight. Are you ready? You’ve got too much powder on.
Helen—I know it.
Mr. Halycon—Well, look me up when you come down; I want to see you before the rush. I’ll be in the library with your uncle.
Mrs. Halycon—And don’t forget the powder.
Mr. and Mrs. Halycon go out.
Helen—Hook up my belt, will you, Cecilia?
Cecilia—Yes. (She sets at it, Helen in the meanwhile regarding herself in the mirror.) What are you looking at yourself all the time for?
Helen—(Calmly) Oh, just because I like myself.
Cecilia—I am all twittered! I feel as if I were coming out myself. It is rotten of them not to let me come to the dance.
Helen—Why, you’ve just only put your hair up. You’d look ridiculous.
Cecilia—(Quietly) I know where you keep your cigarettes and your little silver bottle.
Helen—(Starting so as to unloosen several hooks, which Cecilia patiently does over again) Why, you horrible child! Do you go prying around among all my things?
Cecilia—All right, tell Mother.
Helen—What do you do, just go through my drawers like a common little sneak-thief?
Cecilia—No, I don’t. I wanted a handkerchief, and I went to looking and I couldn’t help seeing them.
Helen—That’s what comes of letting you children fool around with no chaperons, read anything you want to, and dance until two every Saturday night all summer. If it comes to that, I’ll tell something I saw that I didn’t say anything about. Just before we came into town, that night you asked me if you could take Blaine MacDonough home in the electric, I happened to be passing at the end of the drive by the club, and I saw him kiss you.
Cecilia—(Unmoved) We were engaged.
Helen—(Frantically) Engaged! You silly little fool! If any older people heard that you two were talking like that, you wouldn’t be allowed to go with the rest of your crowd.
Cecilia—That’s all right, but you know why you didn’t tell, because what were you doing there by the drive with John Cannel?
Helen—Hush! You little devil.
Cecilia—All right. We’ll call it square. I just started by wanting to tell you that Narry knows where those cigarettes are too.
Helen—(Losing her head) You and Narry have probably been smoking them.
Cecilia—(Amused) Imagine Narry smoking.
Helen—Well, you have been anyway.
Cecilia—You had better put them somewhere else.
Helen—I’ll put them where you can’t find them, and if you weren’t going back to school this week, I would go to Mother and tell her the whole thing.
Cecilia—Oh, no you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even do it for my good. You’re too selfish.
Helen, still very superior, marches into the next room. Cecilia goes softly to the door, slams it without going out, and disappears behind the bureau. She emerges tip-toe, takes a cushion from an arm chair, and retires again to her refuge. Helen again reappears. Almost immediately a whistle sounds outside, twice repeated. She looks annoyed and goes to the window.
Helen—John!
John—(From