“I don’t wonder you thought I was perfectly outrageous, if you didn’t get any of my messages. Why, I sent dozens of messages to all of you! You see I felt horribly sick and dizzy after the second dance—I thought of course Mr. Watson noticed it. So I went out to get some air. I came back after a while, but the lights and the heat made me dreadfully giddy again. So off I dashed. But I did hate to miss everything, so I slipped in for the last waltz. That man—oh, he wasn’t one of the Prom. Man Supply ones. He was—well, you pick out the most unselfish junior you can think of,—one who’d be capable of giving up her last beautiful prom. waltz to a poor unfortunate little freshman,—and maybe you’ll guess right.”
“Did you have a good supper?” asked Timmy Wentworth abruptly. She had heard strange rumors of a waiter’s having been exorbitantly tipped by a couple who had bribed him to bring their supper down to the apple orchard.
Montana Marie laughed delightedly. “How did you know about that?” she demanded. “I didn’t eat any dinner because I’d been to so many prom. teas in the afternoon; but when I began to feel queer in the evening, I thought perhaps a cup of coffee and a sandwich would do me good. So I got a nice waiter to bring me some outside. Wasn’t that all right? Weren’t there coffee and sandwiches enough to go round?”
Timmy nodded, smiling a sarcastic little smile. “Plenty, thank you. Was the man in the hammock, who helped you get and eat the sandwich, also lent by that same very accommodating junior?”
Montana Marie stared in offended dignity. “Wouldn’t almost any junior, especially those that I’d asked men for, be pleased to lend me a man to find a waiter and then show him where I was sitting out in the orchard—feeling quite ill and giddy?” Montana Marie’s tone changed suddenly, growing soft and persuasive. “Say, I almost forgot to tell you what George Dorsey said about you. He said that you were just exactly his ideal of an American college girl, and he hopes to come up here again next month.”
Timmy Wentworth smiled—this time cordially. For she had found George Dorsey a very satisfactory example of the American college man. “He said something to me about motoring up in June,” she admitted, “and I hope he will. He’s very nice, if he is an arrant flatterer. I’m really ever so much obliged to you, Marie, for asking him up for me. Come to dinner to-night, and I’ll tell you all the jists that happened.”
“I’m not going to bother her any more about how she spent her evening,” Timmy told Georgia later. “It was slightly embarrassing for a few minutes, consoling poor Mr. Dorsey for the loss of the only two dances that he specially wanted. But that’s over and done with now, and the way she acted is her own affair.”
“I hate a person who cuts dances,” declared honest Georgia bluntly.
“Maybe she did really feel ill.”
“She seems to have felt like flirting around in the moonlight. Eugenia Ford saw her holding hands on the Morton steps.”