The others laughed. "You'll have to begin at once then," said Cordelia. "We have not been impressed by your brilliancy thus far."
As Janet was notoriously negligent in this special study, the remark was not without point.
"Just wait and see," returned Janet. "I'd begin now if I had not promised to go out to the golf club with Rosalie."
"What's going on? It's too cold to play golf."
"Nothing is going on, but Rosalie thought it would be rather nice and cozy to get a cup of tea there, and some of those good little cakes they serve. We can sit before that big open fire and swop stories, if we can't do anything else. Rosalie has not seen the new instructor, for example, for you know she wasn't here to-day. I can tell her all about him. I shall make him out such a piece of perfection that she'll be sorry she cut classes."
"Mark, the perfect man," said Lee with the absent expression her face always wore when she tried to be funny.
"That's good, Lee," said Cordelia. "Let us hope that it can also be said, 'the end of that man is peace.' I'm afraid it's not likely to be if he continues to instruct in this college."
"Why, how well you know your Bible," said Lee. "There's some excuse for my quotations when I am a clergyman's daughter, but I didn't expect it of you, Cordelia."
"I have a grandmother," said Cordelia concisely.
"Well," said Janet, gathering up her books, "I must go. If I happen to come across the perfect man, I'll tell him all the nice things you have been saying about him."