PERSPECTIVES Pagee ll 41 if'&- A,-TV V V lITING . . by Elizabeth fillen I!" LA=NE STARTED to yell, and then stopped. After all, 1she was getting a little old to scream out of a window, just because her best friend was coming down the street. She remembered now that yelling at each other from simply miles away was one of, the things she and Arden had decided-to definitely not do. But why, she thought-and then she could not remember what she thought; the im- perative thing for the moment seemed to be that she give one last look at her hair. You could never be too sure about hair, especially when it was mousey and straggled. She ran to her dresser an anxiously looked in the mirror. No, it was absolutely right ..'. "Lainie, my deah!" called from the hall. "Arden, mydeah," giggled Lainie. She rushed downstairs at her, laughing senselessly until she was breathless. Then she remembered. "Arden! What hap- pened to the divine black suit!" "Oh . . ." Arden flung up her hands in despair. "I had to take it back. Mother wouldn't let me keep it. Oh. Can you understand? Can you see how I bear it?" It was extremely hard to understand. The black suit had looked so wonderful on Arden and everyone said she should wear black with that bright, firey hair. It was such a grown up looking suit, too. That was what made it really exciting, "Oh. Arden." "Mother said I'm too young to wear black and the suit was entirely too old for me and that was the trouble with raising children in a college town, they grew up too fast, and Dad took one look at me and said 'My God'," Lainie giggled. All the same, it was hideously disgusting. "If they would just admit we had some ideas about thing," she breathed. "If they would just recognize the simple fact that we have opinions!" Arden nodded. They understood each other. They understood each other per- fectly. "E-lane!" She looked up. It was Ann, her sister, coming down the stairs. "Yes, sis," she said. She wondered how Ann always managed to achieve that crisp, perman- ently-combed look. It took practice, probably. She never realized that she had forgotten to do her nails or wear her gloves or keep the seams of her stock- ings straight until she saw Ann dressed up with everything right. "Your hair looks nice, chi-eld. Come along. Bert's here and we'll take you down to the high school." Come along? Why, she and Arden were going to walk to the play! She had told Ann all about it at dinner. It was so nice out, like spring always was only you forgot about it from one year to the next, and Arden was going to wear her new suit-only, now, of course, she couldn't. But they had wanted to go to that movie with Melvin Douglas and Ann would take them straight to that stupid school play, which was at the other end of town. lSHE FELT a sudden tremendous feel- ing of resentment at all the things you were somehow made to do or not to do. How long did it have to be that way? How long did you have to wait, anyhow, until you could do the things you wanted to do? It was simply hide- ous. After all, she wasn't a baby any longer. She felt just as old as Ann, but because Ann was in college and everything she was always bossing her around. It's silly, she thought. Silly. And if I want to walk instead of ride I will. However, while she was thinking, Bert was opening the door of the car and saying "Hello, Small Fry" the way ^he always did, showing very clearly that he didn't consider her a woman at all s up.. . ' s 1 9 " 9 - .9 40ra# at all, just because they weren't old enough, supposedly, to know what they wanted to do. Hideous. That was the only word for it. The car had stopped; Ann had told them to both get in early because if they didn't, mother would worry; and they were going in to the play. She could smell the lilac bushes, sha- dowy and fragrant, all the way across the hockey field. "Oh-gosh," she whispered. "I know. I don't see how we stand it," groaned Arden. Last year it might have been rather exciting to see everybody, all dressed up, at the play; last year they would have yelled "Hi" and gone giggling and running up and down the aisles. But tonight was different. Besides, she and Arden had decided. to stop acting so silly. It didn't interest her in the least when Jimmy Crane grabbed her and tried to put something down her back. And once the biggest thrill of her life had been to imagine Jimmy kissing her, Jeepers. "Would your mother kill us if we didn't get in right after the play?" Arden was asking her, anxiously. She hesitated. Mother was pretty strict about when she got in, and if Arden stayed all night with her it was worse. "We'll see," she said, uncertainly. WHEN THE PLAY started she did not bother concentrating on it. It really wasn't so very good. It was too easy to tell that Wyn Ashly was Wyn Ashly instead of the girl who was supposed to have the pearls but would turn out not to hve them in the last act. Lee Wilson wasn't ,so hot as the hero, either. He was pretty exciting when he was playing basket ball, but not so good on the stage. It was much more inter- esting to think of Wyn and Lee as they really