“M’hm. Annie first: you know, she hasn’t a bit of originality and she said, at once, that she’d have her new one just like it. Then, I dropped in at Evelyn’s tea and—”
“Told all the others, too. M’hm.”
“Yes. But what do you think that cat, Frances, had done? She’d been there before me and told them all that I had come into the fitting-room out of sheer curiosity—I curious, the idea! And the gown she was trying on was not her own, after all, she said, but one about which Madame had asked her opinion and—”
“Gracious, do you suppose that was the truth?”
“Alas, I know it;” groaned the blue-eyed girl, “it belonged to Jack’s sister, Effie! Now, Effie detests Annie and when she sees her in a gown which is an exact reproduction of her own, she will—”
“Won’t she, though? Well, my dear, Effie was an unknown quantity before, but now you may depend upon one thing—she will use any influence she may have with Jack against you.”
“True. And all because of such a silly thing, too! But, then, people are so frivolous. Well, you will join my new club, won’t you?”
“Mercy, yes. You had better invite Frances, too; she will tell Effie all about it, and the first time Effie is offended with Jack, she will tell him, thinking to annoy you both—”
“I shall, though it is hardly necessary, either, for, once started, everybody will talk of nothing else. But, whatever you do, don’t tell Dick a word about it. Evelyn’s husband is sure to tell him, anyhow, and then he can’t say that women never keep secrets.”
“What utter nonsense. Of course women can keep secrets! Why, I once knew a girl intimately for two whole years and in all that time she never told me that her curls were false. I wouldn’t have known it to this day, if I hadn’t walked into her room one day when she had washed them and hung them up to dry. I’ve told that story to a dozen men, and I’ve never yet found one of them magnanimous enough to acknowledge that it proved my point!”