Hilda came back, rosy, refreshed, declaring:
“I’d like to go to another dance to-night. I never felt so utterly rested in my life.”
“All right. That’s what I want to talk about. Mother’s been afraid you’d be too used up to care to ride over and see the doings on County Day—it’s to-morrow, you know.”
“I did know,” Hilda said doubtfully, for Fayte had been talking to her about County Day. So far as she could see, it offered only a chance for him to hang about her and push his usual tactics of monopolizing her. “I’m not sure I want to go, Maybelle. I don’t think we ought to break up the lessons so much.”
“Don’t you?” Maybelle waited a long minute, then added just three words:
“He’ll be there.”
Hilda, bent low over tying her slippers, tried to think of something careless to say, and finally ejaculated weakly:
“Oh—will he?”
“Yes, he will. Everybody goes; small parties; just the Burketts and Lefty Adams and some of the other boys in our crowd. But you’ll get a chance to see him again—if I help you.”
Hilda glanced up, startled; Maybelle was smiling at her meaningly.