“Long enough to spoil some of you girls, I expect,” grumbled Ferdinand.
“Spoil us, Mister? How’s that?” snapped Bess, at once taking up the gauntlet.
“You’ll be wanting to put up your hair and let down your skirts, and will be wearing all the new-style folderols by next summer,” retorted Ferd.
“Oh, won’t they, just!” groaned Tubby, in agreement.
“You wait and see, Smartie!” cried Frank Cameron.
“We are not like the girls you are thinking of,” declared Grace, with some warmth.
“No, indeed,” agreed Percy.
“The Go-Aheads are going to fool you, Ferdie,” said Wyn, laughing. “Just you watch us. All girls aren’t in a hurry to grow up and ape their mothers and older sisters. We’re going in for athletics and the ‘simple life’ strongly; aren’t we, girls?”
Her fellow club members agreed in a hearty chorus. “Besides,” added Bess, “we can have all the fun the other kind of girls have as well as our own kind. We can dance, and go to parties, and wear pretty frocks for part of the time.”
“What did I tell you?” demanded Ferd, grinning.