The other girls laughed.
“I reckon you’d better admit defeat,” Poppy teased. “Prue got ahead of you that time sure enough.”
Gladys drew herself up, and tried to make her roly-poly little self look imposing as she replied:
“When Prue has had as much experience with brothers as I have, she will come to me and humbly beg my pardon and tell me I am right,” she laughed suddenly. “Never will I forget the dance my youngest brother took me to when he was home for his first Christmas vacation. It was at the Country Club, and because it was Christmas all the younger kids went.”
“I know about that kind of dance,” Poppy interrupted. “Nobody has a very good time.”
“Well, I know I didn’t,” Gladys admitted. “I felt very elegant when I left home. Ted had on full dress and looked magnificent, and I had let my best party dress down—” she stopped abruptly and fell to playing a tatoo on the arm of her chair.
“Go on, Glad, we’re listening,” Phyllis urged. “What happened when you arrived at the dance?”
Gladys looked from girl to girl, then she said quietly: “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Sally protested. “Oh, Glad, don’t be irritating!”
“I’m not trying to be,” Glad replied. “Simply nothing happened. Ted left me as soon as he found some of my old maid cousins that he could leave me with, and he only came back and danced with me once. He brought a boy to meet me that wore glasses because he was cross-eyed, and he stuttered. I danced with him once and then I went into the dressing room and took off my slippers. My feet were almost broken, and the next day they were black and blue. He had tramped all over them.”