Feeling a fierce blush heat her cheeks, she hastily looked at his shoulder. Unfortunately all the standing up

and down and tipping her head back and forth had loosened the pin holding the flower in her hair, and it slid unnoticed to hang drunkenly from its wired stem. Thinking madly for something sophisticated and witty to say, she tipped her head back and said brightly, "Are you enjoying your Christmas break?"

"Very much," he said, his gaze dipping to the vicinity of her shoulder and the fallen blossom. "And you?"

"Yes, very much," she answered, feeling incredibly gauche.

Parker's arms dropped away the instant the music ended, and with a smile, he said good-bye. Knowing she couldn't stand and stare at him while he walked away, Meredith hastily turned around and caught her reflection in a mirrored wall. She saw the silk flower hanging crazily from her hair and snatched it out, hoping that it had just that very second fallen.

Waiting in line at the coat check, she stared morosely at the flower in her fingers, horribly afraid it had been dangling on her shoulder the entire time she danced with Parker. She glanced at the girl standing beside her, and as if the other girl read her thoughts, she nodded. "Yep. It was hanging down while you danced with him."

"I was afraid of that."

The other girl grinned sympathetically, and Meredith remembered her name—Brooke. Brooke Morrison. Meredith had always thought she seemed nice. "Where are you going to school next year?" Brooke asked.

"Bensonhurst, in Vermont," Meredith told her.

"Bensonhurst?" Brooke repeated, wrinkling her nose. "It's in the middle of nowhere and it's as regimented as a prison. My grandmother went to Bensonhurst."

"So did mine," Meredith replied with a depressed sigh, wishing her father weren't so insistent on sending her there.

Lisa and Mrs. Ellis were slumped in chairs in Meredith's room when Meredith opened the door. "Well?" Lisa asked, jumping up. "How was it?"

"Wonderful," Meredith said with a grimace, "if you don't count the fact that everything fell out of my purse when I gave Parker the birthday card. Or that I babbled to him about how terrific he looked and danced." She flopped down in the chair Lisa had just vacated and it belatedly struck her that the chair she was sitting in had been moved. In fact, her entire bedroom had been rearranged.

"Well, what do you think?" Lisa asked with a sassy grin as Meredith slowly looked around, her face reflecting surprise and pleasure. Besides rearranging the furniture, Lisa had dismantled the vase of silk flowers and now bunches of those flowers were pinned to the tie-backs on Meredith's canopied bed. Green plants had been purloined from other parts of the house and the austere room had acquired a feminine, garden atmosphere. "Lisa, you're amazing!"

"True." She grinned. "Mrs. Ellis helped."

"I," Mrs. Ellis disagreed, "only provided the plants. Lisa did everything else. I hope your father doesn't object," she added uneasily, standing up to leave.

When she was gone, Lisa said, "I was sort of hoping your father would look in here. I mean, I had this great little speech all prepared. Want to hear it?"

Meredith returned her grin and nodded.

Positively oozing good breeding and impeccable diction, Lisa made her speech: "Good evening, Mr. Bancroft. I'm Meredith's friend, Lisa Pontini. I plan to become an interior designer, and I was practicing up here. I do hope you don't object, sir?"

She did it so perfectly that Meredith laughed, then she said, "I didn't know you plan to be an interior designer."

Lisa sent her a derisive look. "I'll be lucky if I get to finish high school, let alone go to college and study interior design. We don't have the money for college." In an awed voice she added, "Mrs. Ellis told me your father is the Bancroft of Bancroft & Company. Is he away on a trip or something?"

"No, he's at a dinner meeting with the board of directors," Meredith answered, and because she assumed Lisa would be as fascinated with the corporate functioning of Bancroft & Company as she was, she continued, "The agenda is really exciting. Two of the directors think Bancroft's ought to expand into other cities. The controller says it's fiscally irresponsible, but the merchandising executives all insist that the added buying power we'd have would increase our overall profits."

"That's all mumbo-jumbo to me," Lisa said, her attention on a big schefflera in the corner of the room. She moved it a few feet forward, and the effect of the simple change was quite startling.

"Where are you going to high school?" Meredith asked, admiring her transformed bedroom and thinking how unjust it was that Lisa couldn't go to college and make the most of her talents.

"Kemmerling," Lisa answered.

Meredith winced. She passed Kemmerling on her way to St. Stephen's. St. Stephen's was old, but immaculately well-kept, Kemmerling was a big, ugly, sprawling public school and the students looked very shabby and tough. Her father had repeatedly stressed the idea that excellent educations were obtained at excellent schools. Long after Lisa had fallen asleep, an idea was taking shape in Meredith's mind, and she planned her strategy more carefully than she'd ever planned anything, with the exception of her imaginary dates with Parker.

Chapter 5

Early the next morning, Fenwick drove Lisa home, and Meredith went down to the dining room, where her father was reading the newspaper, waiting to have breakfast with her. Normally she'd have been curious about the outcome of his meeting last night, but now she had something more pressing on her mind. Sliding into her chair, she said good morning, then she launched her campaign while his attention was still on the article he was reading. "Haven't you always said that a good education is vital?" she began. When he nodded absently, she continued. "And haven't you also said that some of the public high schools are very understaffed and inadequate?"

"Yes," he replied, nodding again.

"And didn't you tell me the Bancroft family trust has endowed Bensonhurst for decades?"

"Mmmm," he murmured, turning to the next page.

"Well," Meredith said, trying to control her mounting excitement, "there's a student at St. Stephen's—a wonderful girl, from a very devout family. She's very smart, and she's talented too. She wants to be an interior designer, but she'll have to go to Kemmerling High because her parents can't afford to send her to a better school. Isn't that sad?"

"Mmmm," he said again, frowning at an article about Richard Daley. Democrats were not among his favorite people.