Flash and Filigree by Terry Southern

face was now a mask of blushing innocence, and went on at once in a lighter tone: “Beth—Nurse Jackson—was suggesting that there might be some reason to feel that, well, that one of our young men was bothering you.” She finished hurriedly, working with the snaps, but immediately raised her eyes again to the glass to fasten them hard and metal-bright in the soft, wide blueness of the girl’s own. And Babs gave a start of indignation:
    “ Me? Well, I never . . . Beth said that? I was bothered? But what did she say ?”
    “Oh, I assured her she was exaggerating,” Nurse Thorne hastened, soothing the girl, a hand on her shoulder, “that if there had been some indiscretion—well, you would have come to me.”
    Barbara simply flushed crimson at this and lowered her great eyes.
    “—that if he should,” continued Nurse Thorne, “and I won’t call any names here, or if any of them should . . . say anything improper to you, or make— advances. Well! You ought to tell me about it immediately!”
    At this, Babs seemed to recover entirely, or at least enough to look again into the glass, pleasant and surprised.
    “I’m referring, of course,” continued Nurse Thorne, a bit irritably, “to that boy in the Pharmacy, Mr. Edwards’ nephew. Ralph. ” Whereupon Babs resumed her toilet, brushing her hair now, smiling carelessly, and even managing an airy laugh of protest. “No!” she cried gaily, “not that —excuse me—not him! Good heavens, how could Beth! Oh, really, it’s too funny!” And she brushed her hair merrily, “Really!” She turned brightly to face Nurse Thorne, who regarded the girl now with a disturbed smile.
    “Naturally,” said the elder woman, “I wasn’t suggesting that you were interested in him. What I was getting at is: has he made any sort of overtures . . . to you ?”
    “Him?” cried Babs, crossing the room for her purse. “Why, how on earth could he? Oh, I mean, I suppose so! You know how boys are . . . Why, I wouldn’t have noticed it!” she declared finally, as though she had hit upon it; and in the moment of her triumph, she turned again, ingenuous, to face Eleanor Thorne, and looking every inch the American dream-girl, trim almost to masculine in the tapered blue gabardine skirt, and in the web-like pearl of her shirt-waist inviolate.
    “Then there was something,” said Eleanor, looking away now, keeping her voice casual, though her face was terribly dark the while.
    “But, Eleanor,” Babs pleaded, tossing her pretty head merely to insist, “don’t you see? I wouldn’t have even noticed! ” And she gave her a look then that could only show how much she herself was marveling at her own unsuspecting goodness; whereupon Nurse Thorne, in a gesture of dropping the question entirely, came closer to the girl, very close, and still seemingly serious, but no longer frowning, touched her shoulder, while Babs’ eyes remained so wide with the wonder of it all.
    “You look lovely,” said Eleanor, the edge of her voice a tremor. “It’s a wonderful effect,” speaking then as she gently touched the blouse-front, a net of sheen gray fainter than pearl, a dove-down diaphanous gray, fashioned, as it were, to hold in a web of insinuation that treasure nest of lace, the wide-bordered blue nylon slip that itself showed budding through the sheen as a filigree, an impossible perfection of softness, and a promise.
    “I do like it,” admitted Babs, as though she were being quite frankly objective, looking toward the mirror, touching her hair. She stepped away from Nurse Thorne then to the mirror, and leaned peering into it as if she might have caught something amiss from the distance; but, at the glass it proved to be nothing, a fleck, or a shadow, and she sighed good-naturedly, and shrugged, perhaps slightly exasperated at her own flawlessness. Then, snapping the purse shut, she started for her coat in a surge of high spirits.
    “Good heavens, I’ve got to run!” she cried,