Montana Marie O’Toole was not at dinner that evening. After having been for two days without ready money she had received a check in the afternoon mail and had promptly sallied forth to find friends who would help her spend it. But for some unknown reason the afternoon seemed to be a busy one for all the college but Montana Marie. Fluffy was writing a long over-due lit. paper; Straight was coaching the sophomore basket-ball team; Georgia had disappeared directly after lunch, nobody knew where; Eugenia Ford was just starting for chemistry lab.; Timmy Wentworth had promised to go skating. Finally Montana Marie gave up in despair and wended her solitary way toward her bank. She would get the check cashed, anyway, if she couldn’t find anybody to come and play with her. She would send a lot of flowers and candy to all her tutors, and buy a lovely present for Miss Wales. She hadn’t half thanked them all for getting her through mid-years. She had been too busy tearing around having a good time. It was lucky that she had happened to walk down-town alone, because it gave her a chance to think, and to remember about all the people she ought to be grateful to. Montana Marie arrived at the shopping district of Harding in a fine glow of remorse and appreciation. She was just turning the corner to the bank when she met Dorothy Wales, walking sedately along in company with another little girl—a fat little girl with twinkling blue eyes and the general flyaway air of having dressed in a hurry.
Dorothy greeted Miss O’Toole with shy politeness, and Montana Marie smiled her most expansive smile in return.
“Come in with me while I get some money,” she urged hospitably, “and then we can go down street together.”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” began Dorothy, but the fat little girl overruled her.
“Oh, come on,” she urged. “We can run all the way home up that back street.”
In the bank, while she waited her turn at the cashier’s window, Montana Marie had a thought. “What do you kids want most in the world?” she demanded genially, as they went out.
The fat child had her heart’s desire on her tongue’s end. “Cream puffs—all I can eat.”
Dorothy laughed up into Montana Marie’s lovely, smiling face. “How silly, Janet Peyton, to want cream puffs the most of anything,” she said reproachfully.
“Well, what do you want most of anything, dearie?” insisted Marie. Her great thought had been to the effect that the nicest thing she could do for Miss Wales was to make the Smallest Sister blissfully happy. Incidentally it would be fun to fill up fat little Janet Peyton with cream puffs.
Dorothy considered carefully, bound not to rush into silliness.