“Goodness me!” ejaculated Belle.
“Well, I never!” gasped Hortense. “Have you got to butt in, Floss?”
“We want some tea, too,” said the younger girl, boldly, angered by her sisters’ manner.
“You’d better have it in the nursery,” yawned Hortense. “This is no place for kids in the bread-and-butter stage of growth.”
“Oh, is that so?” cried Flossie. “Helen and I are not kids—distinctly not! I hope I know my way about a bit—and as for Helen,” she added, with a wicked grin, knowing that the speech would annoy her sisters, “Helen can shoot, and rope steers, and break ponies to saddle, and all that. She told me so the other evening. Isn’t that right, Cousin Helen?”
“Why, your cousin must be quite a wonderful girl,” said Miss Van Ramsden, one of the visitors, to Flossie. “Introduce me; won’t you, Flossie?”
Belle was furious; and Hortense would have been, too, only she was too languid to feel such an emotion. Flossie proceeded to introduce Helen to the three visitors—all of whom chanced to be young ladies whom Belle was striving her best to cultivate.
And before Flossie and Helen had swallowed their tea, which Belle gave them ungraciously, Gregson announced a bevy of other girls, until quite a dozen gaily dressed and chattering misses were gathered before the fire.
At first Helen had merely bowed to the girls to whom she was introduced. She had meant to drink her tea quietly and excuse herself. She did not wish now to display a rude manner before Belle’s guests; but her oldest cousin seemed determined to rouse animosity in her soul.
“Yes,” she said, “Helen is paying us a little visit—a very brief one. She is not at all used to our ways. In fact, Indian squaws and what-do-you call-’ems—Greasers—are about all the people she sees out her way.”