“Don't say Yes unless his eyes are blue,” drawled a brunette.
“Unless they 're black, you mean,” sharply amended a bright blonde.
“Make him elope with you,” suggested Nell, “It will be such fun to have a real rope-ladder elopement at the Seminary, and we'll all sit up and see it.”
“Oh, do, do, Lina!” chorused the others.
But Lina, apparently too much chagrined at something to be in a mood for jests, sat with her eyebrows petulantly contracted, her feet thrust out, and the hand holding the letter hanging by her side, her whole attitude indicating despondence.
“Still pensive! It can't be he's faithless!” exclaimed Nell.
“Faithless to those eyes! I should say not,” cried the blonde, whom Lina called her sweetheart, and who claimed to be “engaged” to her according to boarding-school fashion.
“Don't mind him, dear,” she went on, throwing herself on the floor, clasping her hands about Lina's knee, and leaning her cheek on it. “You make me so jealous. Have n't you got me, and ain't I enough?”
“Plenty enough, dear,” said Lina, stroking her cheek. “This is only from my brother Charley.”
“The one at Watertown 'Sem.'?”