Here was a dilemma.
“I’ll go with him,” said Bridget.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Julie, “you have been half dead with rheumatism for two days and it is pouring in torrents. We’ll go, Hester and I—we can get there in fifteen minutes. Hustle, Hester!”
It was an incongruous little procession that went out into the storm, the girls leading, the man keeping close to his guides, who encouraged him by a word now and then. He walked firmly and with head erect, not because this was his habitual gait, but because he had been warned that any undue motion of his body would bring showers of scalding water down his back. An admonition like this was not to be disregarded and he picked his way gingerly to the basement door of the club where the girls rang the bell and the supper was safely left in the hands of the housekeeper. Then having lavishly rewarded their cavalier two light-hearted girls rushed home through the night to Bridget.
She welcomed them as if they had returned from some great peril, petted and scolded them because of their wet things and fussed about like a hen whose goslings have swam safely back to shore.
“I’ve made you a pot of coffee to warm your blessed selves,” she said. “It’s a wonder you don’t kill yourselves entirely.”
“You Bridget!” said Julie affectionately as she kicked off her wet shoes, “won’t you put me to bed just as if I were a little bit of a girl?” With those tired eyes and that pathetic droop to her mouth she did not look much of anything else as she said it.
“Julie Dale! are you crazy! Mrs. Lennox’s carriage is coming at nine o’clock to take us to the musicale! You’ve ten minutes to dress!” Hester made this announcement with a high tragedy air.
Julie jumped as if she had been shot. “I had completely forgotten it, Hester. Oh! my dear, I am so dead tired I don’t feel as if I could move.”
“Well, you’ve got to,” remarked Hester, who, having made up her mind to do a thing, was not easily turned from her purpose; “you got me into this thing and we’ll go if it kills us! I know I just about struck it when I called this place ‘The Hustle’” she ruminated. “I am sure I don’t feel as if I’d drawn a long breath since we came here!”