“If you will kindly allow me to proceed, without interruption, I will explain how that is now impossible. I was wondering how Mr. Bonds could be gotten rid of, so that Jack could go home with me and apologize comfortably before dinner; when he suddenly left him and ran up the Vansmith’s steps. Jack was walking slowly, and I just shut my eyes, and made a dash to catch up with him. My own voice sounded like a fog whistle, as I said: ‘W—wait a moment; I—I wish to speak to you.’ And, oh, Emily—”
“You surely never mean to say that Jack wouldn’t stop when you called?”
“It wasn’t Jack. It was Mr. Bonds; Jack had gone into the Vansmith house! But, oh, Emily, if he really loved me, he would have known that I was right behind him, ready to forgive and forget. I shall sail for India some time next week, and if I never return, you—”
“But, Dorothy, Jack is only too anxious to make up. He says that a lover’s quarrel is worse than a Welsh rarebit for keeping a fellow awake at night. And he told me to tell you—”
“Well, Emily Marshmallow, if this is all the interest you take in our discussion of theosophy, we might as well adjourn, and go to a millinery shop or an afternoon tea,” said the president, with some asperity; “and, after all the trouble I’ve taken in reading everything the dictionary and the encyclopædia have to say on the subject, I think you might at least pay attention to my remarks!”
“Dear me, Evelyn, I really beg your pardon. I shall borrow Elise’s note-book, and study it all out before I sleep. There is nothing so productive of a good night’s rest as half an hour’s solid reading after one is in bed. Why, the other night, I took a book on philosophy to bed with me, and before I had read six sentences I was asleep. I never woke till nine o’clock in the morning, and the gas was blazing all that time. I doubt if I’d have waked then if somebody hadn’t knocked at my door.”
“It was the sweet consciousness of duty well performed,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Now, if your book had been a really interesting novel, you would have been awake half the night.”
“True,” said the girl with the classic profile, “and been as yellow as a primrose in the morning. I often say that a few pages of really good literature just before retiring is the best thing in the world for the complexion. One girl I know says she always reads her Bible then; but I don’t approve of that—if one falls asleep suddenly, allowing it to drop heavily upon the floor, it is sure to awaken the other members of the family. If I do that, my father—”
“I know,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, plaintively. “Mamma says that if I take any more solid reading to bed I may confront papa with this month’s gas bill, when it comes in, for she absolutely refuses to do it!”
“Pshaw, men are all alike; though I didn’t use to think so,” said the president. “Now, I always forget all about the topic for discussion until half an hour before it is time to start for the club. A man would say that he hadn’t time to prepare for it, but a woman’s courage never deserts her. I am all ready at the appointed time, even if I have to tell the cook to have anything she chooses for dinner. Now, Tom thinks I ought to be ready by the day before, even if I have to give up a tea or a luncheon to do it.”