The people at
Mrs. Stout's establishment, she plainly saw, were growing a trifle shy
of her. She had never been on terms of intimacy with any of them
during her stay there, hence their attitude troubled little after the
first supersensitiveness wore off. But her own friends, girls with
whom she had played in the pinafore-and-pigtail stages of her youth,
young men who had paid court to her until Jack Barrow monopolized
her--she did not know how they stood. She had seen none of them since
Bush launched his last bolt. Barrow she had passed on the street just
once, and when he lifted his hat distantly, she looked straight ahead,
and ignored him. Whether she hurt him as much as she did herself by
the cut direct would be hard to say.
On Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons ordinarily from two to a
dozen girl friends called her up at the boarding-house, or dropped in
by ones and twos to chat a while, tease her about Jack, or plan some
mild frivolity. Hazel went home, wondering if they, too, would stand
aloof.
When Sunday noon arrived, and the phone had failed to call her once,
and not one of all her friends had dropped in, Hazel twisted her chair
so that she could stare at the image of herself in the mirror.
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