Sonya ,Rudikoff
AMONG THE ANGELIC ORDERS
"Do you think I'll be home by eleven?" Gretchen Weiss
asked again. She was hanging on to a strap in the subway, coming
home from a lecture, and she leaned over to shout at Sheila who was
sitting down. Her friend Sheila Fairfield nodded remotely. It was
difficult-theosophy made Sheila hard to talk to. Right now, poor
Gretchen, sixteen years old, felt shut out from her friend's spiritual
life. Of course, Sheila had no mother, and lived alone.
" 'You must be home by eleven dear!'" Gretchen mimicked a
law-giver whose explicit name needed no spoken reality. "Honestly!
You'd think I was a child!" And she indicated her contempt for this
gross misconception. For some reason she roused the bland, smiling,
grown-up twenty-year-old Sheila. The younger girl was encouraged
to proceed, which she did, righteously swaying as the train racketed
uptown.
"She only lets me go to the lectures because I go with you. She's
afraid I'll meet- Oh, as
if
I couldn't discriminate! Anyhow, she
doesn't know anything about theosophy-what kind of people would
go. I mean, nobody who just wanted to pick up girls would sit
through a lecture about Madame Blavatsky, would they?" she ap–
pealed. She need not have been so concerned, poor angry Gretchen,
for she was not yet in very great danger.
"I know," the older girl agreed. "It's a shame that some people
don't understand philosophy.
If
they have no spiritual life themselves,
they don't allow it to others," Sheila added in her mild way. She
never seemed to be talking about herself or about anyone she knew.
"Oh, Sheila. Exactly!-Not that I ever expect to see Simeon
and Melvin, really, but could my mother complain? Why they didn't
even want to take us home!
If
anything could
be
more
wholesome
