“You don’t know how pleased I am to hear it,” cried the president, warmly. “It is quite worth all the labor of selecting topics and leading the discussion, I assure you. Why, Marion, how late you are! Don’t you know that the really advanced woman is even ahead of the clock?”
“Yes, I do,” panted the girl with the classic profile, “but, really, I’ve had the most awful time getting here at all! You know I’m always in trouble, but really this is the worst that—I’ll never go anywhere with Nell again, unless it’s to my own funeral, and I can’t help myself, then.”
“What on earth has Nell done now?” queried the girl with the dimple in her chin, “don’t you know that you must not expect absolute sanity from an engaged girl? You said you were going with her to the south side to call upon some of the relatives of her affianced. Did she take you over there, and then discover that she didn’t know their exact address? Or did—”
“The address was not forgotten. We hadn’t meant to do any shopping to-day, but we stopped in to buy some thread, and really the new silks were so cheap that—”
“You arrived an hour late, and penniless! I know,” said the blue-eyed girl.
“N—ot quite. I had ten cents left when we started for home, and we had to take two lines of cars. Nell and I couldn’t get seats together—in fact, we were at opposite ends of the car. However, I paid her fare and signaled the fact to her, receiving a nod in reply.”
“Well?” said the president, “didn’t she want to pay your fare on the other line?”
“She—well, the fact is that she had misunderstood the signal, and paid our fare again with her own last dime. And there we were three miles from home, without a penny in our pockets—and the street car company had a dime it hadn’t earned. But then Nell never had a grain of sense—I should think by this time she knew that herself.”
“If she doesn’t, I’m sure you are not to blame, dear,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “However, for my part, I shall not blame you, even if you are as cross as a man who is wearing a frayed collar, for the rest of the afternoon.”
“But, don’t let us interrupt the proceedings,” said the girl with the classic profile, “just tell me what to-day’s topic is, and I—”