“Harry may dictate, but he will never get Minnie to understand that Claudia is to be paid.”
“Oh, well, it will be so amusing to see her awake to the fact, that, upon my word, if it weren’t that Emily’s feelings would be so dreadfully hurt if I deserted her meeting, I should be tempted to take Claudia—I beg her pardon, travel under Claudia’s wing—myself.”
“That, my dear,” said Anne, laughing, “you couldn’t do. Claudia will go on her bicycle, and send her luggage.”
Anne was right.
“I don’t so much care about bicycling for the pleasure of the thing,” Claudia remarked. “But I much prefer it to your cross-country journeys. It is but twenty miles as the crow flies.”
“You will lose your way,” said Emily.
“With a map and a compass? How could I?”
She made all her arrangements with exactitude, and Emily, who had prognosticated trouble for Philippa, had to own herself mistaken when Claudia wrote all the necessary notes and directions, sent off her luggage in excellent time, and came down in a very neat and well-cut dress.
“You are a woman of business. You don’t leave your friends much to do for you,” said Anne, with her kind smile.
“We have learned that much,” returned Claudia, pleased. “What a nuisance those poor clinging blushing women must have been, fainting away on a man’s shoulder whenever an emergency arrived!”