“Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like—” Billy was addressing Molly gravely when Dick slipped a friendly but firm hand over his jugular region, and cut off his utterance.
“He’s not feeling quite himself,” he explained suavely to Dolly, “but we’ll bring him around soon.—I think you’ll find Miss Martin an ideal person to work for, and the salary and the hours unusually satisfactory.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Molly and Dolly together, in the English manner which showed the excellence of their training.
There were several other dubby creatures so much out of the picture that they were not even considered, and then Michael brought in what he called “a grand girl,” and left her standing statuesquely in their midst.
“With large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,” Dick quoted in his throat.
Nancy engaged her without enthusiasm.
“She’ll draw,” she said briefly. “Personally, I dislike these Alma Tadema girls.”
“What the men see,” Betty said, curling around the better part of two straight dining chairs, in the moment of relaxation that followed the final disposition of the business of the day, “in a girl like that first one is one of the mysteries of existence.”
“I know it,” Nancy agreed, with New England colloquialism. “You feel reasonably allied to them as a sex, and then suddenly they show some vulgar preference for a woman like that, and it’s all off.”