“Well?” several voices demanded as Gladys paused.
“There’s nothing more to tell. I wept into somebody’s opera cape until it was time to go home, and during the drive I fell asleep on Ted’s shoulder. I didn’t think he understood until the next day, when Mother asked me if I’d had a good time. I said I had, and after breakfast Ted took me to the village and filled me full of ice cream, and on the way home he explained very gently what a nice thing a sister could be, a sort of little comfort, you know, and then on the other hand, what a dreadful little bore. I didn’t need the talk, I’d learned my lesson. I stay at home now and fix the studs in their dress shirts when they want to go out, and if it’s cold I stay up and make hot soup for them, but I never ask to tag along.”
Nothing was said after Gladys stopped, for a minute or two. The girls were all thinking hard. Most of them had brothers or cousins and they all understood.
“Perhaps if I’d treated my brother like that,” Gwen said with a laugh that held sadness in it, “he might have been a better friend of mine now than he is; but I always tagged along and he got thoroughly sick of me. I dance about as well as your cross-eyed friend, Glad.”
Phyllis was thinking of Tom, and being thankful that he was so much older than she and Janet, that they had never had the chance to make Gwen’s mistake.
Janet was thinking of Peter and wondering. Peter Gibbs was a boy she had known back in Old Chester. They had shared the Enchanted Kingdom together, and he had taken the place of her brother long before Tom had arrived to claim the right. Janet was fonder of Peter than she really knew, and she found herself suddenly wondering if he had outgrown her, now that he was in college. She made a firm resolve to take Gladys’s advice.
“Well, thank goodness, Chuck isn’t in college yet,” Daphne said suddenly, and Sally and the Twins laughed.
Then, as so often happens, when a room-full of people have been quietly thinking, everyone began to talk at once. They dismissed the subject of brothers and returned to the holidays. They made plans for all of the days, except Thanksgiving Day itself.
“Something’s bound to happen then,” Gwen assured them. “Miss Hull will probably ask one of the classes to entertain.”
“You know it will be the Seniors,” Poppy replied reproachfully, “and what we will do at so short notice I’m sure I don’t know.” This in Poppy’s complaining tones made the girls all laugh.