But this one was a special date.
She was seated before a small pine dressing table in the room that she shared with her invalid sister. A cheap warped mirror was propped up against a pile of books, and Frances was working away with her crude implements, trying to attain a makeup for the evening. There were still traces of tears on her cheeks and her eyes and a puffy look. Now and then she caught her breath in a quiver like a sob.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed miserably. "I don’t see why Papa had to go and act this way again, just when I was beginning to get in with real classy people! I don’t think it’s fair! When folks have children, they oughtta think a little about them!"
Wilanna was to her elder sister something like a wastebasket, into whose little open mind she threw all her annoyances and disappointments. The little girl listened always patiently, with troubled countenance and sympathetic demeanor, and tried to suggest some alleviation or remedy for the trouble. Wilanna had troubles of her own, but she usually kept them to herself. Now she turned sympathetic eyes to her sister and watched her for a minute in silence as Frances dabbed a lump of cold cream on her sallow countenance and began rubbing vigorously.
There were traces of tears on the little girl’s cheeks, too, and a burdened look much too old for her years in the eyes that searched her sister.
"You’re not going out—tonight—Frannie—are you? Not tonight!"
"Sure!" said Frances apathetically. "I gotta. Larry’ll give me the go-by if I stand him up. I can’t afford to let the first real classy fella I ever had slip by. There’s plenty a girls ready to ride with him in his automobeel if I don’t go. Whadda ya think I went without lunches all last week t’save money fer that new dress for, ef I was going to stay at home?"
"But Frannie! When Papa’s in trouble?"
"Trouble!" sneered Frances, mopping off the cream vigorously with a soft rag. "Well, it’s his own trouble, ain’t it? I didn’t do it, did I? You didn’t do it, did ya? Well, I should say not! Then why should I give up my pleasure just because he’s gone and got hisself in jail? I guess anyhow not, Wilanna! If Papa don’t think about his children and his home, why should we worry! We gotta think about ourselves, ain’t we?"
"Oh, don’t, Frannie!" the little girl began to cry. "Don’t talk like that, Frannie! He’s our papa, Sister. He’s always been good to us."
"Yes. When he didn’t drink!" said Frances fiercely. "Whad does he wanta drink for? I ask you. Does he havta? You know he doesn’t. You know he can come straight home with his pay envelope when he likes and give it to Mamma. It’s just because he doesn’t care! Larry says people don’t havta drink unless they like. He says everybody has free rights ta drink or not ta drink if they like. He says this is a free country. Papa don’t havta drink unless he likes."
"Oh, Frannie, don’t you love our father?"
"No!" said Frances fiercely with tears in her eyes. "Not when he makes a beast out of hisself. That’s what they call it, Willie; when a man gets drunk, they say he makes a beast. It ain’t so bad to drink a little in a refined way. All the fellas I go with do that, of course. But they know when to stop. You can’t ever think Larry would ever come home drunk, would ya? Nor I. I drink a little evenings when I go out. They all do, but they don’t drink enough to run over a woman and half kill a baby."
"Oh, Fannie!" wailed Wilanna. "You oughtn’t ta drink. You know you oughtn’t. You know what we learned in school. You know what it does to the—the—the—nerves, and the—the—the—brain!"
"Aw, that’s all rot! Larry says that’s an exploded theory. He says young people today know a lot more’n their fathers and mothers did when they was our age, and they know how to control theirselves."
"But, Fannie! Suppose you couldn’t! Suppose you got drunk yourself! Some folks can’t. Papa can’t stop!"
"Aw! Cut that out, Willie! I hope you don’t think I’m like Papa! Papa could stop if he liked. He don’t like! He wantsta get drunk! He does it on purpose!"
There were two great tears in Wilanna’s big blue eyes, and her bottom lip was trembling.
"But Frannie, don’t you think there’s something about drinking that makes people wantta?"
"Aw, shut up, Willie! You’re only a baby. You don’t know anything about such things. I’m grown up. I gotta do as the rest of the young folks do. How’d I look saying ‘No thank ya!’ when everybody else was drinking? They’d all think I was afraid. They’d all know my father couldn’t control hisself."
Frances was penciling in a supercilious eyebrow now, and it required all her attention. The room was very still for a minute or two while the slow sorrowful tears flowed silently down the younger sister’s cheeks. Then Wilanna roused to the attack once more.
"Frannie, I wish you wouldn’t go out tonight. I wish you wouldn’t! Mamma may not come home till a long time yet, and I’m afraid here alone tonight. I keep thinking maybe that woman might die and her spirit come here. I keep thinking it all the time. She would know our father had killed her—and her little baby—and—I wish you wouldn’t go, Frannie!"
"Aw, shut up!" cried out Frances impatiently, rubbing away at a very rosy cheek. "Now you made me put too much rouge on! You make me tired! As if a woman that was dead could come back. You wouldn’t see her if she did. Think about your nice Sunday school teacher and the book she brought you. Didn’t she have a swell dress on, though! Her hat was some class, too, only I’d have liked a little more color on it. She’s a real pretty girl."
"Frannie, why do you put that old rouge on your cheeks? I think you look a lot better without it. She didn’t have any on. She just had her skin. It looked more real. I don’t like to look at you when you get your mouth all red and kind of pointed like that and so white around your nose. You look like one of those false faces you see at Halloween. I don’t feel like kissing you when you look like that."
"Well, there’s others that do," preened Frances self-consciously, with a little unholy laugh her sister did not understand. "Oh, if you aren’t a scream, Wilanna! Wait another year till you grow up, if I won’t have piles of fun telling you how silly you were! Why, baby, I shouldn’t be considered dressed if I didn’t have on powder and rouge. Your teacher probably does it, too, when she really goes out to parties and things. She didn’t bother to waste it on us, that’s all. You can see by her clothes there’s some class to her. But I don’t think she has very good taste, myself. If I could dress like her, I’d go to a real beauty parlor every day of my life and get my face done and a wave. Her hair looked almost like natural curls. I don’t think it looks neat all irregular like that. If I had hair like that, I’d get a bob—that’s what I’d do."
"Oh, Frannie, I thought her hair was lovely!" There were signs of tears once more.
"There, baby! I guess it was all right, only she probably gets it fixed up when she goes to dances and things."
Frances was arraying herself in a flimsy apricot-colored crepe de chine dress with an apron of flimsy yellow lace and a scarf going around her throat and over one shoulder, surmounted by a bright red silk rose where it crossed. She was very busy smoothing down her skirt and plastering a half moon of dark, slick hair out over each cheek as far as the cheekbones.
The little girl surveyed her half in admiration, half in trouble.
"My, but you look pretty, Frannie! But I can’t think you oughtta go t’night, with Papa in jail. It don’t seem
