THE HONOR GIRL Read Online Free Page A

window curtain torn, the door of the medicine-closet hanging by one hinge! Nothing as it ought to be!
    She glanced into her elder brother’s room. Gene had always been particular. Surely he would have things in some order. But no, the prospect was as dreary as elsewhere, only that there had been an attempt to put the bureau in some kind of order for a row of photographs that held the place of honor there. Elsie stopped to look at them. Girls! Many girls! “Tough girls.” Girls with high heels and short skirts, and hair plastered out on their cheeks and forehead after the extreme fashion of the day; showing their teeth, languishing with their eyes, and saucily looking into Gene’s eyes in some groups. The kinds of girls with whom Aunt Esther did not like Katharine, Bettina, and herself to associate. Not bad girls, perhaps, just bold girls, coarse, common girls. With a curl of her lip she went out of the room and shut the door.
    What ever made her mount the third-story stairs she did not know. Possibly a desire to see what had become of Rebecca. She pushed open the door of the back room that had formerly belonged to that servant and found no trace of inhabitant. The cot was there, and the hooks on which Rebecca’s garments had hung were vacant. Rebecca had evidently departed. No wonder. Who would want to stay in such a house? Or had the house gone into this state after the departure of Rebecca? Of course, that was it. Rebecca used to keep things in some sort of order, at least.
    The front room had been Jack’s. He always hated it because he could not stand upright in the corners on account of the sloping roof. He used to protest against the high headboard of his bed that would not allow it to be shoved against the wall. As she passed the little middle storeroom, she caught sight of that headboard and footboard standing back against the wall across the window of the storeroom. Had Jack, then, bought a new bed? She pushed open his door curiously, and her heart sank at the appalling sight.
    On the floor in the middle of the room lay the spring and mattress of the great old bed. A single sheet that was torn down the middle, and seemed to have served for months without changing, was the only semblance of bed linen. From the scanty snarl of bedclothes she recognized her mother’s old plaid shawl, the only article resembling a blanket. An old overcoat and sweater were in the heap, as if they too had been used for covering. The pillow was guiltless of case and much soiled. It dawned upon her that the stock of bedding and table linen had likely never been replenished since her mother’s death.
    Jack’s garments hung or lay about the room in wild confusion, one incongruous mass upon floor and chairs and rickety chest of drawers. One could hardly step without putting a foot on something. Soiled laundry and clean lay side by side.
    The chest of drawers was strung across the back with brilliant neckties, and here and there a clean collar mingled with a soiled one. Cigarette stumps and burned matches were literally everywhere. Elsie had never imagined a human being trying to live and sleep in such confusion. She stood stricken in the desolate place, and thought of Jack, with his brave bright eyes and his beautiful crest of wavy golden hair, existing in a room like this. A sudden lump rose in her throat; and she slipped out of the room, and closed the door after her, filled with a kind of shame for her young brother.
    She hurried out of the house, closed the door, and locked it, putting the key scrupulously where she had found it, and went out to wait for the car.
    She tried to forget the impression she had just received in the house. She tried to think that probably men didn’t mind such things; else, why didn’t they get some new things, and fix the house up? They were all working and had good salaries. There was no excuse for a state of things like that. Had that been the reason why her father wanted her to come home? Well, she