“I think not, dear,” said the girl with the Roman nose, calmly, “Effie is not yet distinctly engaged to my cousin Clarence, so—”
“She has to be on decent terms with his family! I might have thought of that,” said the girl with the eyeglasses.
“If they had been married, now of course I shouldn’t have dared to do it, but—”
“I should think not. Oh, girls, speaking of what happens after the door closes, makes me think of what happened to Effie herself once. It was just after the affair with Teddy Crœsus, you know.”
“The time she thought to make people believe she was engaged to him, and took him to dine with her grandmother—”
“And her grandmother failed to understand the situation and congratulated them! Indeed, I do,” cried the girl with the Roman nose, “although, on account of being her dearest friend, I failed to hear it until two days after everybody else had.”
“Well, you know she went to a breakfast at Nell’s a few days after that,” went on the girl with the eyeglasses, “and left early. As she reached the corner, she remembered a message for Nell and went back to deliver it. She burst into the room unannounced and found all the girls talking at once.”
“About her, of course! What did—”
“Yes. Any other girl would have known that, but Effie said: ‘Oh, girls, do tell me all about it; what has happened?’”
“Well?”