“I’m afraid not. You see, the doctor seemed anxious to earn his money, and insisted that she had some desperate disease. I doubt if she really enjoyed his subsequent visits.”
“All her husband’s fault, too,” sighed the brown-eyed blonde, “and yet, I doubt if she reproached him for it. It seems to be a woman’s province to suffer in silence.”
“Yes, I’ve often heard my mother make that very remark to my father,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I had rather not quote his reply. Girls, I heard the funniest story yesterday; Annie wouldn’t tell me who was the heroine of it, really, sometimes she is as provoking as a man. I’ll be even with her, however, for I’ll never rest until I find out who it was, then I shall tell everybody, and Annie will never be able to convince her that she didn’t tell the whole. It seems that this girl had quarreled with the man to whom she was engaged, and a week later she received a letter addressed in his handwriting. She did think of taking it to a mind reader, but it was near the end of the month, and she hadn’t the money, so—”
“By the way, Emily, dear, when can you come to lunch with me?” broke in the girl with the eyeglasses. “I don’t see half as much of you as I’d like to, and—”
“Any day you like, dear. Where was I? Oh! She hadn’t the money, and the tea kettle happened to be handy, so she—”
“But, why not open it with a hair-pin, like any other letter?” asked the blue-eyed girl.
“She wanted to return it unopened if she didn’t like its contents. It proved to be perfectly horrid; he not only didn’t acknowledge that he was in the wrong, but he actually brought forward facts to prove that she was! Of course, no girl would endure that, so—”
“Do you mean to say that Annie told you that?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses. “I didn’t think it possible that any girl—”
“Oh, I don’t see any harm in that; of course every girl wants her own way. Well, she sealed up the letter again, wrote on it, ‘Returned unopened’ and sent it back.”
“H’m,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “I was thinking that might have been Clarissa, but she is too intellectual to do anything so clever. Anyhow, I’m glad she got the better of him.”