“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the president. “I fear it is too late to go over the discussion again for your benefit. I thought you were taking notes of it as we went along—I saw you jotting something down in your note-book.”
“That was only my calculations for a bicycle suit. There must be something wrong about them, too, for I make it twenty-seven dollars, and I only have twenty-one dollars and thirty-eight cents to my name, even if somebody pays my car-fare home.”
“I only make it twenty-six dollars and two cents,” said the blue-eyed girl, “and I have allowed for everything just the same as you have.”
“But then you are so economical that your sums in addition always come out less than mine, dear. I think you had better go over it again; or let Evelyn do it for you.”
“I make it twenty-eight dollars and sixty cents,” said the president. “Try it Frances, and see if I am right.”
“Oh, don’t,” said the blue-eyed girl, “if anybody else adds it up, it may come out thirty dollars, and then I can’t afford it at all. Well, I do hope one thing,—that when women are legislators they will arrange that we all have more money to spend.”
“Of course they will,” said the president, “else why should they bother to be legislators at all?”
“Hear! hear!” said the girl with the Roman nose.
“What a comfort you are with your knowledge of parliamentary usage,” said the president.
“Yes, I have gained that by joining this club, if I have gained nothing else,” replied the girl with the Roman nose. “I observe, too, that papa and the boys are less inclined to engage in argument with me than they were before they knew the kind of topics we discuss here. Not that I give myself any airs over it, of course,” she added.