Mr. Trevelyan suggested two o’clock, at the main entrance by the umbrella stand, and then he rose to go. “I am worried about my sister. If she has sent no word I must wire,” he said.
Billy rose too. “I should never find my way back alone,” he said. “I’m dumb as an oyster over here. It’s great being with some one who knows the ropes.”
The girls protested against their going so soon, when they had expended so much time and trouble in coming, but Mr. Trevelyan insisted that he must get back at once, and Billy laughingly declared that the girls would have to see him safely home if he stayed and then he would have to see them safely back, and so ad infinitum.
When Babbie consulted her mother about the dance, Mrs. Hildreth listened to the story of the boys’ call, and after a little consideration decided that she couldn’t allow Babbie to go.
“Billy is a dear boy,” she said, “and his friend seems a thoroughly nice fellow, but I couldn’t think of letting you go to a dance with them out in some suburb of Paris, unless I knew you were in charge of a sensible, careful chaperon. Mr. Trevelyan’s sister may or may not answer the description. We have no idea how old she is, or what sort of person she is, or whether she even understands from her brother that you would be in her charge. Evidently you wouldn’t be while you were going and coming. Oh, it’s quite impossible.”
And Babbie admitted sadly that it was. She brightened at once, however. “If I’m as sleepy to-morrow night as I am to-night, I shouldn’t enjoy it. After all, you can go to plenty of dances at home, and you can’t go to these fascinating galleries and museums and churches. I should waste to-morrow and perhaps the day after if I went to the dance. Now I can go ahead and get as tired as I like seeing things.”
So Babbie and Madeline conducted the novices to Notre Dame, took them up in the tower to get a near view of the gargoyles, and then hunted up the shop on the Rue Bonaparte where you can buy small plaster gargoyles, exactly like those on the cathedral for two francs and fifty centimes each. It took so long to decide which Roberta would prefer, and which was best suited to K.’s taste and to Rachel’s, that the girls had to snatch a hasty luncheon at an English tea-room near the Louvre in order to be at the appointed rendezvous by two o’clock. But they did get there exactly at the appointed time, in spite of a little dispute between Babbie and Madeline about which was the “main entrance” to the Louvre. However, Babbie was speedily convinced that the main entrance was the one that had been built for the main entrance —the one with the splendid façade and not the one at the opposite side that happened to be more conveniently situated and was consequently most used by visitors. However, when they had waited fifteen minutes and the men had not appeared, the subject began to be agitated again.
“Well, what does it matter?” demanded Babbie, who hated to be kept waiting and was consequently rather out of temper. “They can reason the thing out just as well as we can. If they’ve gone to the other entrance and don’t find us there, they can come here. It’s their place to find us, not ours to hunt for them.”
“I think it’s silly to stick here, just the same,” said Babe. “Why don’t Madeline and I walk through to the other entrance and see if they’re there?”
“Because they ought to do the walking,” persisted Babbie. “They asked us to come and meet them, and anyhow it’s always the man’s place to do the hunting. I’m not going to have you chase up Billy Benson to tell him whether or not he’s going to take me to a dance to-night.”