Rosamond du Jardin’s Practically Seventeens
though Betty Cornell advised that ‘an older brother is about the best social insurance any teen-ager can have.’ Like Tobey’s, Marcy’s mother is ‘an agreeable-looking woman, just verging on plumpness, whose fair hair was only lightly frosted with grey.’ Also like Tobey, she considers that her parents, ‘on the whole, were fairly reasonable,’ though not when her mother starts urging her to go to the school dance, if only so she can wear the formal dress.
was coming from the radio now. Her lovely white formal would fit into the picture perfectly. But before she could wear it, before she could be a part of the entrancing scene in her mind, someone – who, she wondered a little desperately? – would have to invite her to go with him. Grow up, why don’t you? That was what Ken had said just now. Marcy was trying, but in some respects it wasn’t easy.
It never is, Marcy, it never is.
Marcy felt a sick sort of sensation in her tummy. The very first suitable occasion. A dance in the big gym at High, with paper festoons and the lights softened and all the couples, all the girls and their dates, whirling and swaying to just the sort of music that 129