"Well, yes, to skip," said Adelaide. "Of course that's it. You don't go straight on, you know, house by house, when you ask people,—down the hill and into the town."
"We talked it over," said Olivia. "And we got as far as the Hobarts." There Olivia stopped. That was where they had stopped before.
"O yes, the Hobarts; they would be sure to like it," said Leslie Goldthwaite, quick and pleased.
"Her ups and downs are just like yours," said Dakie Thayne to Ruth Holabird.
It made Ruth very glad to be told she was at all like Leslie; it gave her an especially quick pulse of pleasure to have Dakie Thayne say so. She knew he thought there was hardly any one like Leslie Goldthwaite.
"O, they won't exactly do, you know!" said Adelaide Marchbanks, with an air of high free-masonry.
"Won't do what?" asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely.
"Suit," replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without any air at all.
"Really, we have tried it since they came," said Adelaide, "though what people come for is the question, I think, when there isn't anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn't ask them to pick them up. Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she hoped she would come often, and let the girls run in and be sociable! And Grace Hobart says 'she hasn't got tired of croquet,—she likes it real well!' They're that sort of people, Mr. Thayne."
"Oh! that's very bad," said Dakie Thayne, with grave conclusiveness.