“What! Not Miss Pratt!”
“Yes. Fancy a Senior doing a handspring! She rushed right down and did a perfectly lovely one and Doctor Rhodes presented her with the quarter. The other two would have tried it next; but just then Charles came with the wagon to pick the stuff up and he was none too pleased at finding it all over the place so we helped him load the wagon. Next time he cuts the grass he’s going to make us a perfectly grand pile. He said he’d bring us up some of that long stuff from the meadow and we can have a regular party. It beats gym all hollow.”
“I’m going in,” said Isabelle, “it’s too wet out here.”
“So am I,” said Hazel.
“And I have to dust the drawing room,” said Sallie. “All those pictures of former graduating classes; all those proud Seniors in their white frocks. It’s particularly harrowing just now because I haven’t a decent rag to wear myself.”
Presently the porch was deserted and the bored girls went to their own rooms.
One of Sallie’s many duties at Highland Hall was to answer the doorbell at such times as the two neat maids were busy in the kitchen. Sallie had just dusted the class of 1897 and was beginning on the frame of class 1898, when the doorbell rang. It had taken her almost an hour to get that far because she had found a new interest in the pictures. She was examining the frocks and wishing that she might have tucks like these or ruffles like those or sleeves like some other one.
Ten minutes later, Sallie, very demure in the white apron that Mrs. Rhodes compelled her to wear when she opened the big front door to chance visitors, rapped at the door of room number twenty. Marjory opened it.
“A gentleman in the library to see Miss Henrietta Bedford,” announced Sallie, sedately. But Sallie’s eyes were dancing and she was a little breathless as if she had been running—as indeed she had—all the long way from the front door.
“A gentleman!” exclaimed Henrietta. “I don’t know any gentleman. Do you mean Doctor Rhodes?”