“Georgia ought to be game and take the risk of having foolish young Constance up for a week,” declared Christy Mason. “We’d get her so properly excited that she’d forget the name of her best particular suitor.”
Madeline listened to these comments with an air of polite detachment. Finally she rose from her place and crawled over Betty to the Peter Pan staircase. “Talk about something else until I get back,” she ordered. “I’m going down to the Tally-ho desk to write a letter for Georgia to send to Constance.”
It was fully twenty minutes before Madeline reappeared, waving the letter in her hand.
“Want to hear it?” she asked. “It’s nothing much, but I’m pretty sure it will get young Constance. Listen now, and don’t ask questions, because I won’t answer.
“Dear Constance:
“Can’t you come up next Thursday for a week? I shall be rather busy then—seniors are terribly busy in spring term (having a good time)—but Billy Barstow is to be here that week, and is crazy to meet you and show you the place. Timmy Wentworth wants to take you canoeing. Dickie Drake is coming up to see a sister or a cousin or something, and you two can go buggy-riding mornings, while cousin and I are at classes. (Of course you know you’re not allowed to go buggy-riding with a man after you enter.) You’re also invited to a fraternity dance at Winsted,—not particularly exciting; so perhaps, unless you’re coming up next year and want to meet some Winsted men, it wouldn’t pay you to go. Let me know whether to accept for you.
“But at all events, don’t fail to come up.
“Georgia.
“P. S.—Of course all my friends are planning to do things for you. Don’t let them know that girls bore you, because it would hurt their feelings so.”
Madeline folded the letter carefully and tucked it up her sleeve for safe-keeping. “Rather nice on the whole, isn’t it?” she said. “It does just what Binks astutely pointed out must be done. It brings young Constance to Harding in an expectant and receptive frame of mind.”