“Dear me, Ruth,” sighed Helen, “what a business woman you are getting to be. Your career has really begun—and so promisingly. While I can’t do a thing but play the fiddle a little, daub a little at batik, and crochet!”
“And make most delightful fudge!” cried Jennie Stone, just then coming into the room in her traveling dress, fresh from the hands of her maid and Aunt Kate. “How do I look, girls?”
The bride’s appearance drove everything else out of her friends’ minds for the time being. It was two o’clock and the automobiles were at the door. The bridal couple, attended by bridesmaids, the best man, the ushers, and other close friends, departed for the dock amid showers of rice and a bombardment of old shoes which littered Madison Avenue for half a block and kept even the policemen on special duty for the occasion, dodging!
They all trooped aboard the steamship where arrangements had been made to have the passports of the bride and groom examined.
Mr. Stone had done everything well, as he always did. The bridal suite was banked with flowers. Even the orchestra belonging to the ship had been engaged specially to play. A second, though brief, reception was held here.
The ship’s siren sent a stuttering blast into the air that seemed to shake the skyscrapers opposite the dock. The young folks trooped back to the pier. Tom did his best to escort Ruth; but to his amazement and anger Chess Copley pushed in front of him and Ruth took the sergeant’s arm.
Helen came along and grabbed her brother with a fierce little pinch. Her eyes sparkled while his smouldered.
“I guess we are relegated to the second row, Tommy-boy,” she whispered. “I do not see what has got into Ruth.”
“It’s not Ruth. The gall of that ’Lasses!” muttered the slangy Tom.
“So you think he is at fault?” rejoined his sister. “Oh, Tommy-boy! you do not know ‘us girls’—no indeed you do not.”