The day passed slowly enough. Harriot attached herself to Dorothea but complained that her cousin wasn’t like herself.
“I bring you cake and you just nibble it as if you were at a party being polite,” she protested. “Then I beg Aunt Decent to make some goober pralines and you don’t even look at them. You’re getting just like April.”
Dorothea forced a laugh.
“That’s a compliment,” she said with as much gayety of manner as she could muster.
“Oh, is it?” Harriot drawled scornfully. “Well, I didn’t mean it that way. If growing up means just falling in love, then—”
“What are you talking about?” Dorothea interrupted sharply.
“You,” Harriot answered blandly, munching one of the scorned pralines energetically. “I’ve been puzzling my head, trying to think who it could be. Of course there’s Val Tracy, but ’most everybody thinks he’s in love with April, and ’most everybody is, so I don’t be—”
“Stop talking nonsense!” Dorothea broke in again. “I’m not in love with anybody.”
“Hum!” murmured Harriot doubtfully. “I don’t know anything else that would take your appetite away, and you needn’t deny it’s gone.”
“It seems to me I’ve been eating ever since you woke me up this morning,” Dorothea protested.