“Maybe not,” agreed Betty solemnly. “Very likely you’re right, Straight.”
“When I flap my invitation to the duke’s wedding in your face,” declared Straight solemnly, “then you’ll see that I am. Fluff and Georgia and Timmy and I are compiling her a dictionary of slang for our parting present.”
“Be sure you dedicate it ‘To the Champion Bluffer,’” advised Betty, her eyes dancing at the thought of Straight’s probably speedy disillusion. “And now I must really go in, Straight. I have dozens of things to do.”
“Wait a minute,” Straight begged, desperate in her turn. “Betty Wales, twins are twins. If Georgia and Fluff are going to be in a wonderful new tea-shop in New York, what’s to become of me? Can’t there be a place for me too? Fluffy won’t do anything unless I’m there to keep her cheerful and help her decide things. Can’t there be a place for me too? I know I’m not clever like Fluffy, nor pretty. My—hair—doesn’t—curl. But twins are twins, Betty Wales.”
Betty patted her shoulder comfortingly. “I’ll think. If Emily Davis goes back to teaching, perhaps Georgia could be here, and you and Fluff—or you two could be here. Well, I’ll think, Straight. I ought to have thought sooner. I wish I had a twin to keep me cheerful and help me decide things. I need one this minute worse than Fluffy ever did in her life. Now I must go.”
Straight stared after her wonderingly. “She needs a twin! Good gracious! If she was twins, I guess there isn’t anything in the world she couldn’t do. And yet for all she’s such a winner, she knows what it means to be just a plain straight-haired twin like me. She’ll manage about fixing a place for me. And she shan’t ever be sorry she did. Now I can go to the last meeting of the Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club and be the life of the party.”
Meanwhile Betty Wales, quite appalled by the day’s complications, was getting them off her mind by writing to Jim. “Here are a few of the things I have on hand just now,” she wrote. “Stopping elopements, deciding on the eligibility of strange suitors, persuading eccentric mothers to let their daughters marry, fitting two twins into the position that one twin will fill. So of course I can’t come to New York again until after commencement, and you must persuade Mr. Morton that it doesn’t matter a bit. Which is as nice a job as most of mine.”
CHAPTER XX
CLIMAXES
“Ma’s coming, all right!” Montana Marie told Betty gleefully, a week or so after the elopement that didn’t come off. “I told her it might be her last chance at a Harding commencement, and she thinks that means that I’m to be in gay Paree with her again next winter, so she’s in a very good humor. I hope it’s ripping hot weather for commencement. Hot weather wilts Ma right down, and makes her easier to manage.”
A few days later Marie had another announcement to make. “Pa is coming East too. Georgia addressed her invitation to Mr. and Mrs. James J., just out of politeness. Now she is wild on the question of tickets for things. If Pa really comes here, her sister Constance will have to go on standing room to the senior play and the Ivy concert. For my part I’m crazy to see Pa, but I don’t imagine he’ll care much about these commencement doings. His real reason for coming East is to hire an architect in New York—I don’t know what he’s going to build, but I wrote right back and told him about your friend Mr. Watson.” Marie giggled amiably. “That address that Mrs. Hinsdale gave me is forever coming in handy.”