"Oh, fancy receiving the Boers whenever they call!" says Doatie, faintly, with a deep sigh that is almost a groan.
"I sha'n't mind it very much," says Mona, earnestly. "It will be after all, only one half hour out of my whole day."
"You don't know what you are talking about," says Doatie, vehemently. "Every one of those interminable half-hours will be a year off your life. Mr. Boer is obnoxious, but Florence is simply insupportable. Wait till she begins about the choir, and those hateful school-children, and the parish subsidies; then you perhaps will learn wisdom, and grow headaches if you have them not. Violet, what is it Jack calls Mr. Boer?"
"Better not remember it," says Violet, but she smiles as she calls to mind Jack's apt quotation.
"Why not? it just suits him: 'A little, round, fat, oily man of——'"
"Hush, Dorothy! It was very wrong of Jack," interrupts Violet. But Mona laughs for the first time for many hours—which delights Doatie.
"You and I appreciate Jack, if she doesn't, don't we, Mona?" she says, with pretty malice, echoing Mona's merriment. After which the would-be lecture comes to an end, and the three girls, clothing themselves in furs, go for a short walk before the day quite closes in.