"Past fourteen the last of June."
"Oh, how tall for that! I'm fifteen. But I have two older sisters, and they are always saying 'That child, Daisy,' as if I was about seven. How many sisters have you?"
"None. And no father or mother."
"You poor wretched orphan!"
"She doesn't look a bit wretched, Roxy Mays," said a girl who had been surveying her. "The juniors are all down there," nodding toward the lower end of the hall, "so you might have known she wasn't 'sweet and twenty.'"
"At what age do you begin to grow sweet so as to get ready for the twenty?"
"Oh, girls, don't let's hurry into the twenty. I'd like to stay sixteen three years, and seventeen four years."
"I wish they'd made the years longer. There could have been another month or two put in vacation time."
"What is Hope Center like?" asked one of the girls. "It doesn't sound like a city."
"It's the country, farms mostly. North Hope is the real town part, and quite pretty, with stores, and churches, and a library, and a small but nice park."