“You know I didn’t,” Laura sounded very conciliatory—for her. “It’s just this; I’ve got the whim-whams something terrible. Did you ever have the whim-whams, Amelia?”
“Can’t say I did,” Amelia answered. “At least I didn’t call them any such name as that.”
“Then you know what I mean?” Laura looked very serious.
“You mean,” Amelia turned the open book over on her lap and answered Laura’s question, “that you have awakened early in a hotel in a strange city, that you want like anything to go off exploring, that you know you can’t, and that the next best thing you can find to do is to annoy someone else who can’t go either.”
“My dear professor,” Laura assumed as serious a mien as possible, “you have hit the well-known nail squarely on the head. It must be that you have the whim-whams too. Now what is that you are reading?”
“Well, if you must know,” Amelia gave in, “It’s a guidebook to Mexico.”
“Ah, what could be better.” Laura herself reached for the book. “Let’s see what this country across the street from this hotel is like.”
“It does seem funny, doesn’t it,” Amelia said, “that when we look out our hotel windows we are looking into a foreign country. It doesn’t look any different. It doesn’t sound any different. And it doesn’t—”
“Smell any different,” Laura finished, “and that’s the most surprising thing of all, because according to Mr. MacKenzie, Mexico is just the smelliest place on God’s green earth.”
“Did he tell you that too?” Amelia asked. “Really, when he finished the tirade against the country that he delivered to me after dinner, I began to wonder why in the world he ever brought along five such nice girls as we.”