"Hear the girl talk!" cried Doris, flinging herself back on the bed with peals of musical laughter. "Why, goosey, I flirted with every male creature I set eyes on at school."
"But I thought they did not allow such things."
"Allow? You will undoubtedly be the death of me, with your simplicity," said Doris, sitting up, her golden hair distractingly rumpled, her eyes shining with glee, her dimples dancing like tricky sprites among the deepened roses on her cheeks. "Don't you understand that it was our chief aim to do what we were not allowed? Men, I admit, were scarce. The writing-master was engaged to one of the teachers; but I flirted with him until she nearly cried her eyes out; and after he withstood me three months he surrendered at discretion, and I laughed at him. The French master vowed he would kill himself on my behalf; the music-master fell so conspicuously into my power that the preceptress dismissed him, and got a gorgon of a woman in green spectacles in his place. As for the dancing-master, he played the fool and erred exceedingly whenever I was in sight; so the girls said it was better than any theater."
"Doris, I am ashamed of you."
"What odds does that make, so long as I am not ashamed of myself?"
"But you will not act in that way with Earle?"
"Why won't I? Are you afraid of losing him?"
"He doesn't belong to me," said Mattie, blushing.
"How soon am I likely to see him?" demanded Doris.
"To-morrow. Every day. His mother wants him to be a farmer. She manages Lindenholm now, and sends him to take farming lessons of father. Father thinks everything of Earle, and so does mother."