Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the rear, had to pass the group of loafers in front of the Post Office. The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy burned with shame.
Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and grinned.
“Hello! Some steed!” he greeted Tess. “Dare you to ride her in!”
“Not to-day, thanks,” retorted Tess insouciantly--that was another quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. “Wait till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!”
“All right. The dare holds good.” Then Arthur turned his grin to Missy. “What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?”
The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.
“Want a lift?” asked Arthur, moving forward.
Missy shook her head. She longed to retrieve herself in the public gaze, longed to shine as Tess shone, but not for worlds could she have essayed that high, dizzy seat again. So she shook her head dumbly and Arthur grinned at her not unkindly. Missy liked Arthur Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim apron and had red hair and freckles--not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he hadn't been a witness to her predicament. Not that she felt at all sentimental toward Arthur. Arthur “went with” Genevieve Hicks, a girl whom Missy privately deemed frivolous and light-minded. Besides Missy herself was, at this time, interested in Raymond Bonner, the handsomest boy in “the crowd.” Missy liked good looks--they appealed to the imagination or something. And she adored everything that appealed to the imagination: there was, for instance, the picture of Sir Galahad, in shining armour, which hung on the wall of her room--for a time she had almost said her prayers to that picture; and there was a compelling mental image of the gallant Sir Launcelot in “Idylls of the King” and of the stern, repressed, silently suffering Guy in “Airy Fairy Lilian.” Also there had recently come into her possession a magazine clipping of the boy king of Spain; she couldn't claim that Alphonso was handsome--in truth he was quite ugly--yet there was something intriguing about him. She secretly treasured the printed likeness and thought about the original a great deal: the alluring life he led, the panoply of courts, royal balls and garden-parties and resplendent military parades, and associating with princes and princesses all the time. She wondered, with a little sigh, whether his “crowd” called him by his first name; though a King he was just a boy--about her own age.