“Who’ll hold her during luncheon?” asked Marjorie eager for her turn to come.
“No one, of course!” answered the mother sternly. “Well brought-up babies aren’t held during meals. They lie on a bed with their bottles.”
“Oh,” replied Marjorie humbly, “I guess I don’t know much.”
“You couldn’t know less than I did,” Doris assured her. “But it’s very easy to learn—it sort of comes natural.”
She carried the baby into one of the bedrooms and the girls answered the summons to luncheon. Although the table was elaborately decorated, and the courses beautifully served, Lily explained that she had not planned any special feature to announce her engagement in a novel way, “because,” she concluded, “it has to be a complete surprise to pull off a stunt like that.”
“And yours wasn’t,” added Ethel. “I supposed it was a fact ever since last summer, but when I visited you that Sunday I was positive of it.”
“And I knew it all along, too!” Alice boasted.
“Well,” returned Lily, “since you’re all such clever guessers, tell me which girl in the patrol is engaged—besides me!”
The girls all opened their eyes wide in interest and stopped eating to look around the group and study the expressions of the others. No one, apparently, betrayed any guilt.
“Who?” demanded Alice excitedly. “Tell us quick, Lil!”