Eugenia’s little face hardened as she listened to Betty’s astonishing announcement. She had not lost her ambition to take a place in Harding’s charmed circle, and she had counted on the ploshkin and her connection with it to help her in becoming that envied and enviable creature, a “prominent girl.”
“Madeline Ayres and Fluffy Dutton made it, but it was Eugenia Ford’s idea”—that was what she had looked forward to people’s saying. And Polly Eastman was writing a song called “The Bay where the Ploshkin Bides” for Tibbie Ware, soprano soloist of the Glee Club, to sing for her encore number at the spring concert. There wouldn’t be point enough to the song if there was only one ploshkin. Being naturally silly and suspicious, Eugenia now scented a deep-laid plot against her happiness. Without stopping to reason out the absurdity of her idea, she disentangled herself from Dorothy’s caressing arms.
“You don’t need to explain that,” she said. “The only thing I really want explained is where the theme I left on your desk went to. Good-night.”
So that was what Eugenia really thought! Betty sat very still wondering what would come next.
“I’m homesick for my dear mother, Betty.” Little Dorothy, awed by Eugenia’s coldness and her beloved sister’s forbidding silence, was very near to tears.
Betty held out her arms. “So am I,” she said, and in a minute more the two sisters, clasped tight in each other’s arms, were crying out all their troubles. Betty came to her senses first.
“We mustn’t be such sillies,” she told Dorothy, with a watery attempt at a smile. “Mother wouldn’t ever get homesick for two such big cry-babies as we are. Now come and let me bathe your face, and then we’ll go right down to dinner. No, it’s too late. We’ll go over to the tea-shop and cook a nice little supper for ourselves. That will be lots of fun, won’t it?”
“Ye-es,” agreed Dorothy faintly. “Can we have strawberry jam?”
“All you want,” Betty promised, wishing that she too was at the age when strawberry jam could make her forget her woes.