Claudine could not endure it; she went out on the veranda to await the return of the children, but though she lingered there for an hour and a half, there was no sign of them. Thoroughly vexed, she went upstairs and there they were in their own room. She heard Edna shrieking with laughter.
Quite shamelessly she stood close to the crack of the door.
“Gosh!” said Edna. “If he married both of us, and another one thrown in, it would just about make a wife of his own age. The conceit of men!”
“Well,” said Andrée, “the girls at the conservatory do make awful idiots of themselves about him, you know.”
“But, oh!” cried Edna, “you don’t know how funny you looked, playing that duet, and both—pouncing—!”
“Shut up!” said Andrée, impatiently. “I knew you were laughing. There’s nothing really funny in it, of course not.”
There was silence for a moment, broken by giggles from Edna.
“But, honestly, Andrée,” she said, at last. “Have you encouraged him? I’m sure he came to woo you!”
“I never dreamed he’d come.... I wish he hadn’t! He wrote such heavenly letters. And now he’s spoiled everything.”
“Father adores him; you can see that. What do you suppose he told Father?”