"Do you think we are a lot of crazy schoolboys and expect to settle our disagreements with a regular fist-a-cuff bout? You must come from a very queer place."
"Where I come from doesn't matter in the least. Peggy is the one under discussion and you know where she comes from and who she is. What she is you'll never know."
"I don't see why she should be so very hard to understand."
"She isn't—for people with enough sense. Now just take one good look at those pictures. Is there a weak face among them? One of two things will happen to you if you ever happen to meet the originals: they'll either make you feel like a silly little kid or they won't take a bit of notice of you. It will depend upon how you happen to strike them."
"Oh, are they such, wonders as all that?"
"If you ever get an invitation down to Annapolis you'll have a chance to find out. Peggy and I have about made up our minds to have a house party during the holidays, but we haven't quite made up our minds which girls we are going to like well enough to ask to it. Tanta suggested it. She is anxious to know our friends, and we are anxious to have her. She sizes people up pretty quickly and we are always mighty glad to have her opinion."
Polly spoke rapidly and the effect upon Helen was peculiar. From the pugnacious attitude of an outraged canary, ready to do battle, she was transformed into the sweetest, meekest love-bird imaginable. A veritable little preening, posing, oh-do-admire-me creature, and at Polly's last words she jumped from the box and clasping her hands, cried:
"A house-party! You are planning a house-party? Oh, how perfectly adorable. Oh, which girls are you going to invite? Oh, I'll never, never tease Peggy again as long as I live. I'll be perfectly lovely to her and I'll make the other girls be nice too. To think of going up there and meeting all those darling boys. Oh please tell me all about it! The girls will be just crazy when I tell them. Which of these fellows will be there?"
Helen had rushed over to Polly's dresser upon which in pretty silver frames were photographs of Ralph, Happy and Wheedles. On Peggy's dresser Shorty and Durand looked from their frames straight into her eyes, while several others not yet framed looked down from the top of the bookshelf. Silly little Helen was in an ecstasy. Her mamma had never believed in companions of the opposite sex for her "sweet little daughter" but had kept her in a figurative preserve jar which bore the label "you may look but you must not touch." Mamma's instructions to Mrs. Vincent upon placing Helen in the school had been an absolute ban upon any masculine visitors, or visits upon Helen's part where such undesirable, though often unavoidable, members of society might congregate. "She is so very innocent and unsophisticated, you know, and so very young," added mamma sweetly. Mrs. Vincent smiled indulgently, but made no comments: She had encountered such mammas and such sweetly unsophisticated daughters before and she then and there resolved to keep an extra watchful eye upon this innocent one. Thus far, however, nothing alarming had occurred, but Mrs. Vincent knew her material and was prepared for almost anything. She also knew Lily Pearl and felt pretty sure that if an upheaval ever took place it would turn out that Lily Pearl or Helen had touched off the mine. The foregoing scene gives some hint of the viewpoints of the young ladies in question.
During this digression Helen had caught up Wheedle's picture and was pressing it rapturously to her fluttering bosom and exclaiming: