“Oh, well, he’s going to stay East quite a while, I guess,” Marie told her.
And then for no reason at all Marie blushed furiously, laughed at herself for blushing, and finally explained that Fred had never been ’way East before and it made her laugh to remember the comical things he had told about his long journey. “He’s in New York now,” she went on. “I expect he’s doing the town in real cowboy and miner style. He’s a sure enough cowboy and miner, Miss Wales.”
“Is he coming up here again?” asked Betty, just to show an interest.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Montana Marie gaily. Then she flushed and laughed again. “If you want my honest opinion, I should say that he very likely is. Now I’ll go and make myself square with Georgia and Miss Wentworth and the rest of them. They are awfully easy marks, or they’d have seen through me. Good-bye, Miss Wales. No warnings so far, and concentration is working to the queen’s taste.”
CHAPTER XIV
ENTERTAINING GEORGIA’S SISTER
Georgia Ames was blue about something. As the spring term wore on toward June she grew absent and pensive to a marked degree. It wasn’t that she was a senior; Georgia Ames wasn’t the sort to mope because college was almost over for her. Besides, she and Lucile Merrifield and the Dutton twins were going to Lucile’s camp in the Maine woods for a long, blissful summer. That certainly wasn’t a prospect to make you dread the plunge into the wide, wide world. It was only the girls who didn’t know what was coming next, or who knew and didn’t like it, who moped through their last spring term.
The Duttons were pathetically worried about Georgia’s low spirits. Straight suggested a doctor; Fluffy adroitly sounded Georgia on the subject of conditions, and discussed the ethics of “flunking out” seniors exhaustively, until Georgia suggested mildly that the subject wasn’t of any great interest to her.
“I’m thankful to say I’ve never had to worry about flunking,” she said, “and none of our crowd has either—oh, I forgot Eugenia Ford when she was a freshman. But that was pure silliness.”
So the matter of conditions was definitely eliminated.
“Maybe she’s in love,” suggested Montana Marie, who was present one day when the subject was discussed. “Being in love makes you feel—well, queer. And if it’s not returned——”