“Tom tells a rather good bicycle story,” observed the president. “He met a member of his club, who is a noted scorcher, the other day. He was wheeling along a very disreputable specimen of a woman’s machine. ‘Hello,’ said Tom, ‘got yourself into trouble?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘I ran into a woman up yonder, and I’m afraid it will be cheaper to buy her a new wheel than to have the old one repaired.’ ‘Humph,’ said Tom, who knows him pretty well, ‘it’s a wonder you didn’t just ride away and leave her, when you found what you had done.’ ‘I did,’ said the scorcher, ‘but it didn’t do me any good.’ ‘Policeman saw you, eh?’ ‘No. The woman turned out to be my wife!’”
“Good!” said the blue-eyed girl. “I came very near not getting my bicycle last year. Papa said I should have one if I learned to make a good pie. I agreed to do it, but I had reckoned without the cook. She said flatly that she wouldn’t have me messing up her kitchen. Finally, I compromised by agreeing to trim her a hat, if she would make the pie. It was really quite the same you know.”
“Quite,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin.
“And did it turn out all right?” asked the president.
“The hat did; but the pie—well, the cook had lived with us for three years, and that was the first time she had turned out an uneatable pie!”
“But, why didn’t you ask your father to let you try again?” asked the girl with the Roman nose.
“I did, dear; but I took no chances that time; I bought the pie from the Woman’s Exchange. And I must say that I think I quite deserved the bicycle after all I had been through to earn it.”
“Indeed you did,” said the girl with the classic profile. “By the way, Emily, I hear that you and Dick had an almost fatal quarrel while you were both learning.”
“We did,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “It happened this way: I was able to ride at least two blocks without assistance, so I got up very early, and went to the park alone to practice. I was getting along very well until I heard somebody coming up behind me at a terrible pace. That made me so nervous that I fell right off. The cyclist who had frightened me was Dick, and he actually kept right on without offering to help me!”
“Perhaps he didn’t know it was you,” suggested the girl with the Roman nose.