"It's something if you get two!"
"Nancy's taken both mine!"
"Honest injun, I haven't!"
"I tell you I'm famished!"
"Help! Don't all shout at once," decreed Irene. "Let's have a biscuit parade. Each hold out what she's got. Here, Audley, hand one of yours over to Francie. Effie, break that one in half and share with Chris. Désirée, you may have mine this morning, but this business mustn't happen again. I've no time to stop now, but I'll inquire into this, you bet!"
Leaving an only partially satisfied group of small girls behind her Irene sped to her tryst in the garden. She took a short cut, and ran through the orange grove, where the half-ripe oranges were beginning to turn yellow on the trees, then shamelessly jumping over a flower border of stocks and primulas, crossed under the rose-pergola, turned down a creeper-covered side alley, and found herself in a neglected portion of the grounds. Here there was a very dilapidated little arbor, built sixty or seventy years ago when the Villa Camellia had been owned by an Italian count with a weakness for the fine arts. The roof leaked, and a riot of jessamine almost hid the door; the window-sill had fallen, and the floor was a mass of dead leaves. The plastered walls were painted with frescoes—faded and moldy now—of a country château with cypress trees, and three ladies in big plumed hats riding on white horses, and a gentleman in shooting costume and tall boots, who wore side whiskers, and carried a gun, and had four hunting dogs standing in a row behind him. All these were rather stiff and badly painted, yet gave an air of neglected grandeur to the grotto. There were marble seats, and a rickety marble table, and a little broken statue of Cupid in the corner, and the floor under the rubbish was of blue glazed tiles, so that the building, though fallen on evil days, still showed some remnants of its former glory. As it was in an out-of-the-way spot and far from the tennis courts, it was not often visited, and had therefore been appropriated by the Camellia Buds as a suitable place for the secret meetings of their sorority.
The nine were all assembled here waiting impatiently for Irene. She brushed through the jessamine-covered doorway, took her seat, and breathlessly explained the reason of her delay.
"Would you have believed such meanness?" she ended.
Peachy nodded solemnly.
"I told you some of our precious Transition would make you blush. Was it Bertha? I thought so! I knew she had got hold of Mabel. I believe they're buddies, and a charming pair they'll be! We shall have to tackle them somehow. This certainly can't be allowed to go on."