of the table, George Newton, thin and meticulous and
curious, his sharp eyes and nose and pointed chin now
turned in her direction.
But on the instant, realizing that she must say something,
Roberta replied: “Oh, yes, that’s so. I did go over there for a
little while. Some friends of my sister’s were coming over
and I went with them.” She was about to add, “We didn’t
stay very long,” but stopped herself. For at that moment a
certain fighting quality which she had inherited from her
mother, and which had asserted itself in the case of Grace
before this, now came to her rescue. After all, why shouldn’t
she be at Starlight Park if she chose? And what right had
the Newtons or Grace or anyone else to question her for
that matter? She was paying her way. Nevertheless, as she
realized, she had been caught in a deliberate lie and all
because she lived here and was constantly being
questioned and looked after in regard to her very least
move. Miss Pope added curiously, “I don’t suppose he’s a
Lycurgus boy. I don’t remember ever seeing him around
here.”
“No, he isn’t from here,” returned Roberta shortly and
coldly, for by now she was fairly quivering with the
realization that she had been caught in a falsehood before
Grace. Also that Grace would resent intensely this social
secrecy and desertion of her. At once she felt as though
she would like to get up from the table and leave and never
return. But instead she did her best to compose herself,
and now gave the two girls with whom she had never been
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familiar, a steady look. At the same time she looked at
Grace and Mr. Newton with defiance. If anything more were
said she proposed to give a fictitious name or two—friends
of her brother-in-law in Homer, or better yet to refuse to
give any information whatsoever. Why should she?
Nevertheless, as she learned later that evening, she was
not to be spared the refusing of it. Grace, coming to their
room immediately afterward, reproached her with: “I
thought you said you stayed out at your sister’s all the time
you were gone?”
“Well, what if I did say it?” replied Roberta defiantly and
even bitterly, but without a word in extenuation, for her
thought was now that unquestionably Grace was
pretending to catechize her on moral grounds, whereas in
reality the real source of her anger and pique was that
Roberta was slipping away from and hence neglecting her.
“Well, you don’t have to lie to me in order to go anywhere or
see anybody without me in the future. I don’t want to go
with you. And what’s more I don’t want to know where you
go or who you go with. But I do wish you wouldn’t tell me
one thing and then have George and Mary find out that it
ain’t so, and that you’re just trying to slip away from me or
that I’m lying to them in order to protect myself. I don’t want
you to put me in that position.”
She was very hurt and sad and contentious and Roberta
could see for herself that there was no way out of this trying
situation other than to move. Grace was a leech—a hanger-
on. She had no life of her own and could contrive none. As
long as she was anywhere near her she would want to
devote herself to her—to share her every thought and
mood with her. And yet if she told her about Clyde she
would be shocked and critical and would unquestionably
eventually turn on her or even expose her. So she merely
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replied: “Oh, well, have it that way if you want to. I don’t
care. I don’t propose to tell anything unless I choose to.”
And at once Grace conceived the notion that Roberta did
not like her any more and would have nothing to do with
her. She arose immediately and walked out of the room—
her head very high and her spine very stiff. And Roberta,
realizing that she had made an enemy of her, now wished
that she was out of here. They were all too narrow here
anyway. They would never understand or tolerate this
clandestine relationship with Clyde—so necessary to him
apparently, as he had explained—so troublesome and even
disgraceful to her from one point of view, and yet so
precious. She did love him, so very, very much. And she
must now find some way to protect herself and him—move
to another room.
But that in this instance required almost more courage and
decision than she could muster. The anomalous and
unprotected nature of a room where one was not known.
The look of it. Subsequent explanation to her mother and
sister maybe. Yet to remain here after this was all but
impossible, too, for the attitude of Grace as well as the
Newtons—particularly Mrs. Newton, Grace’s sister—was
that of the early Puritans or Friends who had caught a
“brother” or “sister” in a great sin. She was dancing—and
secretly! There was the presence of that young man not
quite adequately explained by her trip home, to say nothing
of her presence at Starlight Park. Besides, in Roberta’s
mind was the thought that under such definite espionage as
must now follow, to say nothing of the unhappy and
dictatorial attitude of Grace, she would have small chance
to be with Clyde as much as she now most intensely
desired. And accordingly, after two days of unhappy
thought and then a conference with Clyde who was all for
her immediate independence in a new room where she
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422
would not be known or spied upon, she proceeded to take
an hour or two off; and having fixed upon the southeast
section of the city as one most likely to be free from contact
with either the Newtons or those whom thus far she had
encountered at the Newtons’, she inquired there, and after
little more than an hour’s search found one place which
pleased her. This was in an old brick house in Elm Street
occupied by an upholsterer and his wife and two daughters,
one a local milliner and another still in school. The room
offered was on the ground floor to the right of a small front
porch and overlooking the street. A door off this same
porch gave into a living room which separated this room
from the other parts of the house and permitted ingress and
egress without contact with any other portion of the house.
And since she was still moved to meet Clyde clandestinely
this as she now saw was important.
Besides, as she gathered from her one conversation with
Mrs. Gilpin, the mother of this family, the character of this
home was neither so strict nor inquisitive as that of the
Newtons. Mrs. Gilpin was large, passive, cleanly, not so
very alert and about fifty. She informed Roberta that as a
rule she didn’t care to take boarders or roomers at all, since
the family had sufficient means to go on. However, since
the family scarcely ever used the front room, which was
rather set off from the remainder of the house, and since
her husband did not object, she had made up her mind to
rent it. And again she preferred some one who worked like
Roberta—a girl, not a man—and one who would be glad to
have her breakfast and dinner along with her family. Since
she asked no questions as to her family or connections,
merely looking at her interestedly and seeming to be
favorably impressed by her appearance, Roberta gathered
that here were no such standards as prevailed at the
Newtons.
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And yet what qualms in connection with the thought of
moving thus. For about this entire clandestine procedure
there hung, as she saw it, a sense of something untoward
and even sinful, and then on top of it all, quarreling and
then breaking with Grace Marr, her one girl friend here thus
far, and the Newtons on account of it, when, as she well
knew, it was entirely due to Grace that she was here at all.
Supposing her parents or her sister in Homer should hear
about this through some one whom Grace knew and think
strangely of her going off by herself in Lycurgus in this way?
Was it right? Was it possible that she could do things like
this—and so soon after her coming here? She was
beginning to feel as though her hitherto impeccable
standards were crumbling.
And yet there was Clyde now. Could she give him up?
After many emotional aches she decided that she could
not. And accordingly after paying a deposit and arranging to
occupy the room within the next few days, she returned to
her work and after dinner the same evening announced to