"Don't you think most geniuses are peculiar?" parried Judith. "Helen will not play for us unless--well, unless Miss Allen especially requests it. She adores Jane."
"I don't blame her," admitted Anaa. "I am charmed with her myself. She is one of the girls with rare character who is not forever advertising it. When I came in with wet feet the other night she did not insist on me draining her chocolate pot. Most girls do, and I abhor hot drinks for wet feet."
Judith laughed. Anaa was naive, if a trifle conspicuous with her bobbed hair. Of course bobbed hair was so comfy, and so becoming, too bad it was not the general style, mused Judith, patting her own heavy coil, that would slip down her neck every time she attempted to relax outside of bed quilts.
"I shall almost hate to leave for school," Judith supplied. "It has been so jolly here."
"I do not find New York exactly a playground," Miss Kole followed, "but, then, I am studying."
"Of course that's different. We are shopping, shopping and after meals shopping again. I wonder if there are any bargains left? I adore buying pretty underlies, but I am not so keen on the practicals. But my friend Jane has set up enough stuff to make a hope chest for all Wellington."
"She is from the West, you said?"
"Yes, from Montana. But that does not mean that she has never seen pretty things before and is overdoing it," Judith hurried to qualify in justice to Jane.
"Oh, of course not. I did not mean to infer that," Miss Kole apologized. "But I do think Westerners, as a rule, are so much more generous, and so much more enthusiastic than the cold Easterners. I am from New England, and all I can remember of holidays around home is that the rag rugs were taken off the carpets, and the powdered sugar sprinkled over the doughnuts. Life in my home was always a question of rivalry in economy. When I came here I set out for days to buy every imaginable sort of food I had been reading labels of all my life. Of course at college I had all I wanted, but even there it was not on my own initiative. I longed to find out how it felt to be free to buy without a pencil, and paper and premium list."
"Oh, don't call your home town such hard names," Judith put in kindly. "I am quite sure it has made you very dependable. I wouldn't wonder if a term there would fit me for life with much better qualifications than I can now boast of. But here come Jane and Helen." (They had Americanized the Helka.) "And now more bundles."