Minga looked out, eyeing him critically. "Dunce, why do you wear a sweater that color? It's awful for you; you should wear nothing but soft tans and yellow to go with your doggy eyes."
"Humph!" said Dunstan, "that'll do for my doggy eyes." He got out and went around to the back of the car and took out a kit of tools. "Now I don't want to be bothered with the drool of an engaged flapper," he declared; "but I say, do you want to go on this joy jump? I mean it."
The girls leaning out consulted each other with their eyes. "We were going to wash our hair," demurred Sard, "and then we promised to make fudge for Aunt Reely, and then," said Minga solemnly, "I promised to show Aunt Reely a knitting stitch."
"Ha," the youth below looked up and grinned—"in other words you don't want to go, or in still other words you don't like the Gertrude and Cin combination. Oh, Sard, you're so noble and literary," the brother said in mock admiration, "you express things so well. You—she—I—they—it—he—she," Dunstan dropped the rôle of Aunt Aurelia and concluded shortly, "Well, why should you go? Who wants a couple of old hens washing their hair? The road-hog Gert and Cin'll do all right."
Minga thought the thing over. "There's nothing to see on the Hackensack," she misdoubted, "just old water and moss and trees and things."
"Oh, ain't there?" said Dunstan, airily. "Well, I don't tell everything to ladies who don't care for my society or my friends. I don't speak of pink pearls, and here I raced all the way home and punctured a tire to get you two old crones because I thought you'd like to go."
The two crones, slightly crestfallen, once more surveyed each other.
"Which men did you pick out for us?" at last inquired Sard.
Dunstan pushed back his cap; his brow was hot with his philanthropic offer to promote a picnic.
"Well," he divulged, a little unwillingly, "of course, Gertrude wanted me, and Cinny had a chap coming out on an afternoon train, dunno who, and then we thought, well, the girls thought, that Sperry, the owl-eyed lawyer, would do for you, Sard, and Minga, well, Balky Popham sort of butted in and chose Minga."